Looking for CFL Barrier Research and Successful CFL Programs

We developed a program about 5 years ago. It was originally aimed at teachers. It wasn't successful but we still have the documents, calculators and research on our website for those that want to get detailed info on economics and the environment. www.michigan.gov/deqp2initiatives open Bright Idea.

Maggie Fields

Doug:

Check out our case study "Compact Fluorescent Lamp Vendor Program" at http://www.toolsofchange.com/English/CaseStudies/default.asp?ID=140

Cheers,
Jay

Jay Kassirer
Executive Director, Tools of Change Educational Institute
President, Cullbridge Marketing and Communications
61 Forest Hill Avenue, Ottawa ON, Canada K2C 1P7
Tel: (613) 224-3800,
e-mail: [email protected]
Website: cullbridge.com

This has been a source of some frustration to me as well. One of the things I do as part of my energy consultancy is sell CFL's alone or as part of an energy management solution for small and medium businesses. It is hard to convince people that these energy saving bulbs do save money, energy and the environment. Some of the resistance is due to historical perception (ie aesthetics, light quality, manufacturing quality), up front cost, disbelief (they sound too good to be true - so there must be a catch), Much of the effort goes into dispelling old myths and physically showing side by side comparisons.

Cheers
MOC

We use a "comparometer" to show the energy consumption differences between CFLs and incandescents. It consists of a regular electric meter attached to two empty sockets and a toggle switch. You put the two kinds of bulbs in and let people toggle the switch back and forth and watch how fast the meter runs with the incandescent. By doing this "experiment" themselves, they are more likely to believe the claims of greater energy efficiency. We also have an "energy bike" where people can pedal to spin a generator and power various items like a small tv, fan, hair dryer, or banks of CFLs vs incandescents. Students and adults physically experience the different amounts of power required to run the two types of bulbs. The energy bikes are used to teach about energy in the schools and for general public at fairs. Some other observations: giveaways of CFLs to residents in senior housing resulted in virtually no bulb replacements -- they gave them away to their children and grandchildren! Have had reports of defective CFLs entering marketplace. Make sure only Energy Star rated ones are promoted. If these malfunction, encourage reports made to manufacturer. Have also heard of three cases of bulbs "exploding" in their fixtures -- needless to say these seniors will not allow weatherization staff to place any more CFLs in their ceiling fixtures.

Gay

Gay Nicholson, Ph.D.
Sustainable Tompkins Program Coordinator
www.sustainabletompkins.org
607-533-7312 (home office)
607-279-6618 (cell)
1 Maple Avenue Lansing, NY 14882
[email protected]
Southern Tier Energy$mart Communities Regional Coordinator
Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County
615 Willow Ave., Ithaca, NY 14850
[email protected]

I purchased a CFL to test out a couple of years ago and learned that (back then) it didn't give me instant light. Often by the time I completed my task in the room, the bulb would not yet be fully lit. As a result, I didn't purchase any new bulbs until recently after having them at work and seeing that the technology has improved.

Terri

Greetings In explaining the reason CFL (compact fluorescent lights) are more efficient I pose the question--- ever change a light bulb? Did you notice that a fluorescent tube or CFL is cool to the touch while the other can burn you fingers. Why is this?--- Incandescent are less efficient, they produce a lot of waste heat. One then goes on to make the point about how long they last. On the issue of lasting-- LED (light emitting diode) exit lights-operators of buildings will often install these as replacements, not to save energy but to reduced stepladder effort (once a decade). This also applies to hard to reach incandescent bulbs in conventional uses; a CFL is easy on the stepladder effort. Despite all of that, fluorescent still looks different no if and or buts. This opinion is based; not on what was available but what is available in Victoria BC today even if they say, "improved". Here where we have mild winters I use them on exterior lights at the entrances, these fixtures are difficult to open for changing bulbs and quality of light is not much of an issue. Bottom line everything has its application you just have to speak into the persons listening.

Forrest

You could commission some research into the blindingly obvious. Until lampshade designers, lamp designers, lighting designers, design editors in lifestyle magazines etc etc design for CFLs and market them vigourously then only those who care more for the environment and climate change than the look of their home will go all out for CFL - and we're not in the majority yet.

Frances

Frances Smith
Principal Environment Officer
Environment & Sustainability Department
Directorate of Environmental Services
Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames
Guildhall 2 High Street Kingston upon Thames KT1 1EU
Tel: 020 8547 4758
Fax: 020 8547 5926

Hello List:

I'm excited to share some info about a Canadian community engagement CFL program that's portable and measurable. I'm the director of a new Ottawa, Ontario-based NGO called One Change. We built and tested a CFL pilot project last year. It has been independently evaluated by Ekos Research (a Canadian polling and research firm), and has been recognized with a Market Transformation Award from Energy Star. Our pilot project was called "Porchlight." We managed to distribute door-to-door over 25,000 CFLs in 8 weeks using a combination of volunteer labour and a retail partnership. Our campaign slogan is "Change Within Reach." How this evolved: A year ago I stumbled on the following Energy Star statistic: If every household in Canada replaced one incandescent with a CFL, the reduction in pollution would be the equivalent of taking 66,000 cars off the road." My background is in writing and marketing, so I immediately thought, "How hard can it be to get every household in Canada to change one light bulb?" I gathered a few friends and we registered the not-for-profit. We decided that we need to do more than tell people about this amazing statistic. What we needed to do was bridge the gap between awareness and action by giving people their first bulb for free. We also decided that we would harness what we perceived as a latent desire for action by getting volunteers to deliver the bulbs in their own communities. "Light up your neighbourhood" The symbolism of the light at the front door represented our community focus. The porch light would become the gateway to other changes, and the symbol for community engagement. The response to our campaign was incredible. We were endorsed on the editorial page of the National Post and in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, and hundreds of people volunteered to help out. We did all this with almost no government support and one part-time paid staff member. The Ekos polling after our campaign showed that our message reached 75% of the population in the target area. Among those who received the free bulb, 65% installed it right away. Up to 60% of those who received a bulb said they would now replace all the bulbs in their house with CFLs or choose CFLs when older bulbs burned out.

"Fostering Sustainable Behavior" was a real eye-opener for me. It's helping us to expand our program across the Capital this summer -- everything from the importance of clear marketing, a simple message (Change Within Reach), the need for a pilot study and careful evaluation, and networking for community partnerships. We stumbled through all this last year, and the book is a blueprint for us as we go forward. I'm really glad too to be on this list, and am eager to communicate with anyone who has run CFL campaigns, or is planning to. We've designed Porchlight to be a portable and turn-key operation and we are eager to share it with other groups. As I noted above, we have just negotiated a deal to expand Project Porchlight across Ottawa (250,000 bulbs). We order the bulbs directly from the manufacturer; it's delivered in our specially designed campaign packaging -- no blister packs! We are also talking to utilities and government reps in other provinces (BC, Alberta and NB), and a Porchlight proposal is almost complete for Cleveland, Ohio. I'd be very interested to get in touch with other CFL programs, and I'd be happy to share our project evaluation data. Meanwhile, you can find out more about us by visiting our web site onechange.org.

Stuart Hickox
One Change/Project Porchlight
onechange.org
613 552-7362

WOW! Way to go, Stuart. I love that story. Nice use of symbolism and simplicity. We'll pick it up here in the Philly area and see if we can duplicate your success. (my side effort outside of NativeEnergy).

Thanks.
For the Planet,
George F. Hoguet

Director, Mid-Atlantic Operations NativeEnergy, LLC
21-31 W. State Street, Unit 29B Media, PA 19063
(610)566-1332
www.nativeenergy.com

Hi Doug,

Mercury Energy, an electricity provider in Auckland, New Zealand, is currently encouraging consumers to purchase 'ecobulbs' through providing vouchers to their customers. Their website explains this more fully: It is difficult to evaluate whether it is successful just yet as this program is currently in action, but in any case it increases public awareness of the need to reduce energy consumption. Mercury Energy are advertising this on television so it has a fairly high profile at present. In fact, the implementation of this program is timely because a storm cut all electricity supply to half of Auckland for several hours last Monday, disruption many services including traffic lights. Also, parts of Canterbury in NZ's South Island are currently without power because of heavy snowfall. These events have been covered in our mainstream news media eg TVNZ . Coverage in relation to Auckland's fairly brief power cut has mainly consisted of unhappy business people voicing their discontent at energy providers. In contrast, the ongoing situation in Canterbury is more serious. Despite the fact that many more people were affected in Auckland, snowbound rural communities have been without power for several days and currently about a thousand customers still are. There is nothing quite like a practical lesson on how we take electricity for granted to highlight the need for NZers to address power consumption and supply issues.

cheers,
Kim Maree

Doug, Mike and others,

You could check with the folks at Project Porchlight http://www.onechange.org/about.php to see what sort of barriers they are hearing about in Ottawa and other communities. Fertile ground for some good evaluation!

Judy Gibbens

Manager, Member Services and Communications
P.O. Box 928, Peterborough, Ontario K9J 7A5
Tel: 705-745-7479
Fax: 705-745-7294
Toll free: 1-877-533-4098
www.greencommunitiescanada.org

CFL's do need to be promoted wherever appropriate, but one should remember two things: * That they're haz waste at disposal time, as are fluorescent tubes. * That they emit significantly higher electro-magnetic fields (emfs) than do conventional light globes. Eg. Anyone involved in measuring such fields will know that someone in an office on a floor above a bank of fluorescent lights on the floor below can experience significant emf exposure.

SUE B

Hi all,

A few years ago the Moreland Energy Foundation Ltd (MEFL) worked with a local kindergarten to help them implement a passive cooling plan for their facilities; to fund the retrofits we developed a fundraising campaign similar to a chocolate drive, but using CFLs instead of choccies. One of our staff members set up a stall at the kinder at pick-up time, to explain the benefits of CFLs to parents whilst selling them directly, or getting parents to onsell to friends and family. We took a small fee from each CFL sold to cover admin costs, and the rest of the profits went straight to the kinder to fund retrofits (such as installing ceiling fans). The campaign raised about AUD$1200, and was successful partly due to the high retail price of CFLs at the time (the price has since come down considerably). The CFL drive had the double benefit of helping to fund energy efficiency retrofits while also distributing CFLs among the kindergarten community and promoting the technology. Unfortunately there was no evaluation done to assess how many of the CFLs sold were actually installed, but this approach could be useful for others and it would be interesting to see some evaluation results. In working with community groups and householders on energy efficiency, the anecdotal evidence I often come across is that people are more than happy to continue using CFLs once they've tried them and found that they work; often they need a "first contact" with the technology to encourage take up. I regularly talk to New Mothers Groups about home energy efficiency and often give out CFLs as an incentive for mums to sign up for our more intensive behaviour change programs, such as free home audit programs and Green Power plans (see www.mefl.com.au or www.communitypower.org for more info). Those that are skeptical about CFLs have usually had a bad experience with them when they were very new to the market and not as refined as they are now, or through buying very cheap, low quality products. They may also have been unaware of the distinction between "warm" and "cool" colour temperatures, and used the wrong type of CFL for a particular application (e.g. used warm white in a study lamp and didn't get a bright enough light). Happy to chat further about any of this off-list.

Anna Strempel

Household Program Specialist
Moreland Energy Foundation Ltd
PO Box 276 Brunswick VIC 3056
Ph: (03) 9381 1722
Fax: (03) 9381 1733
www.mefl.com.au

Hey Listees,

It's great to hear about the success of the Ottawa based CFL promotional program - truly an example of individuals taking ownership of an issue and making a difference. The next challenge is encouraging manufacturers to take on the 'end of life' responsibility for their products by establishing collecting and recycling programs for old CFLs. Is anyone aware of such a product stewardship initiative or progress towards one?

Cheers,
Jim Martin, BSc

General Manager of Environmental Services
Regional District of Fraser-Fort George
155 George Street Prince George, BC V2L 1P8
ph: 250-960-4483
fax: 250-960-4466
[email protected]
www.rdffg.bc.ca

CFL's like other Fluorescent tubes should be recycled responsibly and some places are in various stages of setting up recycling programs to deal with this (particularly for commercial premises) similar to those dealing with computer waste. It should be noted, however, that the amount of hazardous material (eg mercury) is very small and less than the emissions saved from the electricity generation that would be used to drive the normal light globes (especially if displacing coal fired electricity). The issue of electromagnetic fields (emf) is sometimes raised as a concern when using CFL's. CFL's do have a a higher emf than a normal lightglobe (as do strip fluoros) but this a swamped by the fields generated by the wiring in the walls, floors and ceilings (which can be much higher than average in commercial and industrial buildings) and by devices like TV's Computers, electric cookers, electric heaters, stereos, and all the other appliances we use every day. If you use an electric shaver or a hair dryer, for example, you are exposed to emf's many thousands of times higher than average. In reality CFL's produce an emf that is relatively insignificant compared to the daily exposure we experience.

Cheers
MOC