From the blog The Daily Green: Imagine you own a business. Times are hard. One employee has to go off the payroll. You've narrowed the layoff list to two. One of the employees is four times as productive as the other. She can be a bit on the high-maintenance side, but her work ethic is superior – she shows up early, goes home late, doesn't complain about weekend work, stays focused on task, and gets her assignments done on time and under budget. The other employee has been around forever and is as familiar as an old shoe. However, he spends 90 percent of his energy on non-work tasks – playing card games on his computer, checking the basketball scores, chatting up his buddies, and taking leisurely lunch breaks. Plus, he doesn't have much stamina – he tends to roll in around 9:30 a.m. and is out the door at the stroke of 5 p.m. Which one do you let go? Seeking advice, you ask your friends at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which is supposedly a hard-nosed voice of business. They tell you to dump the star and keep the bum. He costs more and does less, but he's, well, he's just better, that's all. Times are hard. You can't afford to take such bad advice. So, what's the point of this fanciful tale? The CEI, under the guise of a “grassroots” outfit called Freedom Action, has ginned up a campaign to repeal what it falsely calls a “bulb ban.” There is no bulb ban. A 2007 federal law set tougher efficiency performance standards for general-purpose incandescent light bulbs. Manufacturers are taking the bulbs off the market and redeploying to produce lighting products that are less wasteful and last longer. That's their choice. Calling it a “bulb ban,” however, economizes on the truth. CEI likes the good ol' incandescent light bulb, which its campaign kickoff press release grudgingly admits is “somewhat less energy efficient” than the compact fluorescent light (CFL), which it blows off as having “many limitations and drawbacks.” CEI also says the CFL is “considerably more expensive.” Whoa, there, partner. The incandescent is “somewhat less energy efficient?” How about spectacularly and stupidly less energy efficient? The incandescent squanders 90 percent of its input energy as waste heat. It poops out after only 1,000 hours. And “considerably more expensive?” The CFL is four times more energy-efficient, meaning – take note, hard-nosed business advocates at CEI – it delivers four times as much value per dollar spent on energy. It also lasts 7 to 10 times as long. Don't take my word for it. Let's ask a utility. And not a squishy liberal utility from one of the coastal states, but TXU Energy, which supplies electricity to patriotic, red state Texans. TXU helpfully links its customers to a Department of Energy website comparing a 25-watt CFL, costing $3.40, with a 100-watt incandescent, costing 60 cents. BM
