A Little Dim

What I find interesting about today’s announcement by the government that they will support compact fluorescent light-globes through a ban on incandescent lightbulbs is that it is seems to be entirely at odds with the retail sector.

Environment minister Malcolm Turnbull said:

“yellow incandescent bulbs, which have been virtually unchanged for 125 years, would be replaced by more efficient compact fluorescent bulbs by 2009. By that stage you simply won’t be able to buy incandescent lightbulbs, because they won’t meet the energy standard.”

In late 2006 massive US retailer Wal-mart announced they were looking at supporting CFs in a big way and that this move was going to change the way the world looked at lightbulbs.

Great, I thought, I’ll get involved and as a first step, I’ll replace the lights in the house with CFs. In January I went to four big stores around Perth, including two Officeworks superstores, and not one of them stocked CFs. No displays, no stock, no nothing. One sales person I asked pointed out that it would be much cheaper for me to purchase a four-pack of incandescent bulbs and replace them as I needed to.

While I think it’s a great initiative, I do think we’ve got a long way to go before flickering¹, energy-conscious, neon heaven.

¹ New CF globes don’t flicker and provide really great light. While I’ll be the first to admit that the older ones were horrible,the news ones are actually spot on.

Posted in Oz on Wednesday February 21, 2007.