Madness is Light-Bulb Shaped
by Christopher Booker

It is hard to recall any action by the EU crazier than the "great Euro-bulb blunder": the decision by its 27 heads of government to ban the sale of our familiar incandescent light bulbs from 2009. As the EU's 490 million citizens will discover to their horror, the "low energy" compact fluorescent bulbs these politicians want to make compulsory, in their self-regarding desire to "save the planet", have immense drawbacks.

They are larger and uglier than normal bulbs. For a wide range of purposes they cannot be used (as with dimmer switches or as security lights). They contain toxic mercury, which the EU itself is trying to ban. To run them efficiently means leaving them on so long that any energy savings are minimised. Furthermore, a Defra report last year found that more than 50 per cent of existing light fittings in UK homes cannot take the new bulbs and would have to be replaced, at a cost running into billions of pounds.

Interestingly, the three market leaders in compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), including Philips and Siemens, have been lobbying Brussels hard on this issue. They have already won a 66 per cent duty on CFLs imported from China and the Far East, to ensure that these remain much more expensive than normal bulbs. But even Philips has said that to affect a changeover throughout the EU would need 10 years. In ruling that it must be done in just two, those politicians, who cannot have taken any technical advice before indulging in such an absurdly dictatorial gesture, seem finally to have taken leave of their senses.
The Sunday Telegraph, 18th March 2007