Fast Company reports that, in the next 12 months, starting with a major push this month, Wal-Mart wants to sell every one of its regular customers–100 million in all–one compact fluorescent bulb. In the process, it may change energy consumption in the United States, and energy consciousness, too. Teaming up with General Electric, which owns about 60% of the residential lightbulb market in the United States, Wal-Mart wants to single-handedly double U.S. sales for CFLs in a year, and it wants demand to surge forward after that.
Which presents a daunting challenge: Wal-Mart’s push into swirls won’t just help consumers and the environment; it will shatter a business–its own lightbulb business, and that of every lightbulb manufacturer. Because swirls last so long, every one that’s sold represents the loss of 6 or 8 or 10 incandescent bulb sales. Swirls will remake the lightbulb industry–dominated by familiar names GE, Philips, Sylvania–the way digital-music downloads have remade selling albums on CD, the way digital cameras revolutionized selling film and envelopes of snapshots. CFLs are a classic example of creative destruction.
This equals energy savings roughly equivalent to the needs for a average American city – each year. The effect is cumulative.
Bravo, WalMart, for being willing to prove you can make money with green marketing decisions. Probably more money than those afraid of progress.
Just a ploy to get people into their stores to buy more cheap garbage.
I love you Wal-Mart.
–100 million in all–one compact fluorescent bulb.
just think that 1100 pounds of mercury in the future landfills at 5 milligrams per bulb
you can’t win
I feel no need to deal with mercury contamination and will wait for usable LED replacements for my incandescent light bulbs.
Wal-Mart can go down in flames for all I care, though I do occasionally shop there for minor items.
There was an article in this month’s Smithsonian magazine about the history of the lightbulb, and it mentioned walmart’s plan, aparently if 100million people switch out an incadecent lightbulb for a cfl bulb, thats the same as pulling 800,000 cars off the road (not sure how acurate those figures are tho)… It also covered the evolution of these cfl’s apparently they were REALLY bulky back in the late 70′s… any of you old people remember those?
I read somewhere that the alleged energy saving is spurious. Most light bulbs are used at night, obviously, while peak power consumption happens during the day. Power stations are designed to provide for that peak and can’t simply be switched off at night when demand is low – they just keep on running. So while low-consumption bulbs will consume less electricity, the energy required to keep the power stations running will be reduced by very little if at all.
Yea… where are the story’s about the mercury in these things?
Not that I think the editors of this blog would only present one side of a story, or anything…
I have yet to have a “Swirl” light bulb outlast a standard bulb by 10x, or even 5x or even 2x. On average I see a bit better than 1.5x, depending on the fixture that it is used in. Certainly not worth the extra money that stores want for them.
I wonder how much of a kick back Walmart is getting for these bulbs?
It just took Wal-Mart a while to get their Chinese factories cranked up for CFL’s
I have had experience with a number of these bulbs, both at work and home. The claims at how long they last are ridiculous. In my experience, they last maybe a little bit longer than an average bulb, yet cost a whole lot more.
Savings from the bulb are also supposed to be noticeable, also something I’ve not seen in my own experience with them.
I read somewhere that the alleged energy saving is spurious.
They do draw fewer watts, but it isn’t necessarily that simple. Purely resistive loads, like incandescent bulbs, have a power factor of 1. Reactive loads, (pretty much anything that isn’t purely resistive, including CFL’s) usually don’t. (Look at a device that has its ratings printed on it. If the load is in Watts, it’s probably resistive. If it’s rated in Volt-Amps or VA, it’s probably reactive.) At any rate, the upshot is that even though less power is consumed, it isn’t necessarily cheaper to transmit that power, because it’s the amps that you have to account for. It’s a hidden cost that is rarely discussed.
…and they buzz like crazy! I tried them in my living room and i had to get rid of them after 1 minute because they were driving me nuts.
I think that this is an information-poor environment.
Opinions are not the same as facts.
I think it’s the curmudgeon factor again: aw, everything’s useless, they’re all assholes, it’ll never work. Why bother with trying to save energy (and thus the Adirondacks, just for starters) when, you know, politicians are all scumbags and the scientists all have some kind of weird agenda.
Some of you folks really ought to read (more!) Collapse by Jared Diamond. He examines what makes a society more or less adaptable, more or less willing to change entrenched behaviors to save themselves. I’m not encouraged by the attitude I see here. Walmart, for all of its egregious behaviors otherwise, is doing something good here. Is that so difficult to digest?
OK – have at it!
Cheers!
“I read somewhere” the Earth is flat and conservatives have a conscience. Let’s hear it for egregious behavior. Yaay!
Takes too much effort to change a light bulb, anyway. This from lamers with 600 watt power supplies.
Of course, we can all presume the flat-earthers among these comments DO have a mercury-based thermometer at home. Anal, of course. That’s 500mg of mercury, right there. I hope they dispose of it, safely.
Meanwhile, from a dangerous radical source – the US EPA:
“The highest source of mercury in our air comes from burning fossil fuels such as coal, the most common fuel used in the U.S. to produce electricity. A CFL uses 75% less energy than an incandescent light bulb and lasts at least 6 times longer. A power plant will emit 10mg of mercury to produce the electricity to run an incandescent bulb compared to only 2.4mg of mercury to run a CFL for the same time.”
btw – is that same guy who holds the iPhone for the Apple illustrations?
I’ve been replacing with CFLs for a couple years now, and the only failure was a zero-hour. Mine don’t buzz at all, but they take a moment or two to reach full brightness.
Power stations are designed to provide for that peak and can’t simply be switched off at night when demand is low – they just keep on running.
Right, but they can’t generate current that goes nowhere…it has to go somewhere. Or more correctly, when the load (demand) decreases the amount of energy required to maintain the voltage decreases. This is easy to demonstrate with a simple hand-crank generator.
Maybe 50% less demand doesn’t turn into 50% less coal burned, but the decrease is significant nonetheless.
Just when we all hate Walmart, they do something special like this. I listened to that idiot Hannity last night trying to say Time is stupid for not listing Bush as “Influential”, but this is what presidential influence is supposed to do…get people and corporations to do the right thing for the good of the entire country. Regardless of party, this is what we need in our leaders. Thanks, Walmart.
7,
I think flourescent bulbs are akin to the development of catalyst bags for gas lamps, a stopgap measure at best. One reason prices are dropping is that flourescent bulb manufacturers are pumping out all they can before solid-state lighting devices mature to the point where they displace those mercury bombs .
The best thing about CFLs for me is the fact that they put out very little heat. I live in hot FL and an incandescent bulb by my chair puts out tremendous heat. The CFLs make a huge difference.
I replaced all the lights in my house with these CFL lights a couple years ago and they scarcely last longer then a traditional light bulb. I’ve gradually switched back to traditional bulbs as the CFL’s eventually burned out. The only way to get longer life out of one of these bulbs is to leave it on 24/7. They just can’t handle the on/off cycle in daily use and are more expensive to boot. I’d rather wait till L.E.D. lightbulbs become cheaper and switch to those.