Month: February 2007

Ok before you read my rant below I recommend you all read the following article entitled How Many Lightbulbs Does it Take to Change the World?

Right so you have read the article?

You all understand why we should move away from Incandescent bulbs?

So how many compact fluorescent lights (CFL) do you have in your house?
We currently have 6 in our house and they are in the high use areas.

How many more could we install?
We have 8 more standard bulbs that could be replaced and 5 that cannot due to the fact that dimmers are installed on those lights.

Currently the Australian government is proposing that they mandate that all bulbs sold from 2009 onwards meet lower wattage usage standards. This would effectively make it impossible to buy and incandescent bulb and I for one am in favour of this. However note that would mean that I have 5 globes that I could not replace without hiring an electrician to removing the dimmer switches. Also globes in some appliances (ovens, fridges, sewing machines) would have to be exempt as there is not alternative bulbs for these situations. The government mandate may force manufacturers to provide solutions for these appliances and that can only be a good thing.

One lighting solution that is not getting much attention is the low voltage spot lighting that is currently popular in Australian homes for the kitchen and dining areas. People believe that since they are low voltage they must be low power users. This is absolutely WRONG. These lights are normally 12-24volt halogen globes that produce a huge amount of waste heat and are often worse than standard old incandescent globes. Additionally the transformer to drop the 240volts AC to 12-24volts DC also produces waste heat then therefore uses additional electricity. So what is the solution for these lights, well there is two, small CFL or LED based down lights. The CFL solution requires the removal of the transformer and replacement of the fittings back to 240volts and therefore is an expensive changeover cost. However this could be recovered within 2-3 years in electricity and bulb replacement costs. LED lights can directly replace the Halogens without the removal of the transformer. However the light is not as bright or concentrated.

You don’t have to change every bulb at one time next time a bulb blows in your house go to the shop, look of the CFL that will fit, buy it and try it out. Remember to look at the wattage and the colour temperature (warm, natural, or cool) and pick the best one for the room you are planning to use it in.

Australia is in the beginnings of a Federal Election year.  This means that every night we have to sit through politicians arguing over every thing from the economy, water, coal, nuclear power, education, industrial relations and taxes.

The party currently in power, the Liberals, have just found out that Australians care about the environment.  For years this government has refused to do anything related to global warming, CO2 levels or water consumption and provision.  Now they want to take over control of the Murray-Darling river system (the largest in Australia, like the Mississippi for the USA)  from the individual states.  They want to legislate to basically ban the old incandescent light bulb.  But the big one is to develop approx 25 nuclear reactors to provide electricity in the future.  However they don’t want to sign onto Kyoto and any international carbon trading that has already started, but they are considering an Australian only carbon trading system.

OK so now you have the background, over the next few weeks I will be talking about the following environmental issues and solutions:

• Lighting
• Transport especially cars
• Electricity Generation
• Housing and Urban design
• Carbon trading and taxing

I hope that you stick around while I do some research and articulate my ideas and maybe we can discuss other options and opinions.