ecoresearchers

General Electric said it is working on improving the incandescent bulb to make it comparably efficient to compact fluorescents. I have to admit, this is something I had no idea was on the horizon. GE’s goal is to have a bulb that is almost as efficient as a CFL in a few years. Of course it’s not really important which technology is used, incandescents, CFLs, or LEDs, but it doesn’t seem a very lofty goal to be almost as good as something that already exists today. I won’t dismiss it as useless because there is the issue of the mercury content in CFLs, that is not toxic to individual consumers but could cause problems in landfills. On the other hand, CFLs cause an immediate reduction in pollutants from power plants. GE says this about the benefits of using its future product:

Adoption of new technology could lead to greenhouse gas emission reductions of up to 40 million tons of CO2 in the U.S. and up to 50 million tons in the EU if the entire installed base of traditional incandescent bulbs was replaced with HEI lamps.

Yes, or the greenhouse gas reduction would be even greater if CFL lamps were used today. GE also talked about its high-efficiency incandescents having the instant-on advantage over CFLs. There are still some CFLs that take a second to come on and then to get to full brightness but I must say that out of about the seven bulbs in my apartment I only have that problem with one of them so I think that is probably a mostly moot point.

An interesting point to all this talk of CFL vs. incandescent is that in a few years it’s likely that we’ll be wanting to replace CFLs with LEDs. Let’s sit tight and wait for laws decrying the wasteful CFL! Maybe GE has a point after all.