Britain to Phase Out Incandescents

The British Government plans to carry out a bright idea of the next two years. To phase out traditional light bulbs.

They hope to stop selling 100 watt bulbs by January 2009, and 40 watt bulbs by 2010.

Tony Blair signed up to EU plans that signaled death across Europe for traditional style bulbs earlier this year.

Britain hopes to phase out the traditional bulb in favor of CFLs as quickly and as smoothly as possible.

If every British household replaced three 60 or 100 watt light bulbs with CFLs, the energy savings would be greater than the power used by the country's entire street lighting network.

How is that for motivation?

However, consumers might not be willing to fork over the money needed to buy the more expensive CFLs.

Hilary Benn, the Environmental Secretary hopes to work on energy wasting televisions next. He hopes that manufacturers will cooperate. He is also looking to set higher goals than Britain's current ones to reduce emissions, recycle, and compost.

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: "Almost all of the retailers involved have already committed to removing these bulbs ahead of 2011 after a campaign by Greenpeace." He also believes that the government needs to have stricter standards, in order to encourage the more involuntary use of the CFLs.

"For every year of delay in getting rid of these bulbs, five million tonnes of C02 are emitted into the atmosphere, unnecessarily."

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