Posted June 19, 2011 //
Tagged as Blog //
2 Comments
Texas repeals lamp ban while the Energy industry creates video games! Governor Rick perry signed Texas House Bill 2510 into Law on Friday 17 June 2011. This bill defeats Federal Law that will ban the sale of some incandescent lamps throughout the USA come January 2012. Cunningly it allows the manufacture and sale of incandescent lamps within the state, although none are made there yet there is now a business opportunity if you happen to have an incandescent lamp manufacturing line and fancy a move to Texas! In the rest of the USA there is much angry talk about cessation from federal control and the wildest talking about Texas breaking up the union! In the meantime U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, is still struggling on in Washington trying to take the ban out of the original 2007 legislation.
While this is going on XCEL Energy , a major Minnesota based energy company with a broad portfolio of generating assets including Coal and Nuclear have launched “Bulb Blasters,” a free iPhone game that uses a variety of compact fluorescent “weapons” to blast incandescent lamp based flying saucers. I couldn’t resist this however can report that it is possibly the worst implementation of a classic Space Invaders video game that you could possibly imagine. Maybe they should have spent their money on some proper research in cleaning up their Coal fired generating capacity or saving it for decommissioning their nuclear plants!
Kevan Shaw 19 June 2011
Posted June 9, 2011 //
Tagged as Blog //
5 Comments
MP Sheila Gilmore has proposed Early Day Motion 1878 asking MPs to address the issue of continued availability of incandescent lamps for people suffering from diseases aggravated by the spectral and other properties of CFLi energy saving lamps.
During the consultation process the issue of medically significant sensitivity was discussed at length and assurance was given that there was no intention that people who would suffer as the result of using CFLi would be prevented from getting incandescent lamps. It was, however, left to the individual member states to arrange their legislation to allow for this. Needless to say most have not. As you can see from the post elsewhere about ‘Heatballs’ some countries, Germany in this case, are being quite draconian, preventing the import and sale of incandescent lamps.
This motion will hopefully address the issue of availability of incandescent lamps however does nothing to ensure the long term availability as there has to be a sufficient volume of sales to support the manufacture of them.
Readers from the UK are urged to write to or email their MP asking them to sign the early day motion to get some Parliamentary action on this issue. You can find out who your MP is on this website:
http://findyourmp.parliament.uk/
Thanks
Kevan Shaw
Posted June 7, 2011 //
Tagged as Blog //
No Comments
The draft regulation is now in circulation to existing consultees prior to a meeting on July 5 in Brussels. I have taken a first look and can tell you that any pretense for a technologically neutral approach has been abandoned. It has been accepted that Tungsten Halogen Low Voltage lamps will have to remain for the foreseeable future however the actual efficiency values are not clearly stated in this draft for consultation, something I find concerning in a consultation paper at this stage of the process.
There are also a few “correction factors” included in the process that makes a distinctly hilly playing field when comparing different technologies and as one would expect TH has the uphill struggle particularly compared with LED and CFL.
I would suggest contacting whoever you know is a consultee on the process and talk to them about this paper sooner rather than later and even email Andras Toth Andras.TOTH@ec.europa.eu The Policy Officer for this issue and ask him for a copy of the draft regulation to comment on by 24 June.
Kevan Shaw June 7, 2011
