Wednesday, March 19, 2008
A Position Statement By The IALD On Banning The Incandescent Bulb
Live Design: "From Australia to California and across Europe, there are proposals to ban the incandescent lamp, and recently enacted energy legislation in the US will phase out certain types of incandescent lamps. While the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) strongly supports the development and use of technologies, methods, and appropriate regulation to minimize the energy use of lighting systems, the IALD believes that “incandescent bans” must be carefully conceived or they are likely to be ineffective."
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4 comments:
I feel like the discussion on incandescent bulb banning is premature. In most cases, what's energy efficient is also more cost efficient, so many group are making the switch to more efficient solutions already. If a university or a company is going to save money by paying less for electricity, they will switch to fluorescent lights or another option. In theatrical lighting, the banning of the incandescent bulb would definitely speed up the development of technology, but wouldn't really make a lot of sense in the short term. As the IALD statement said, the alternatives to incandescents aren't really that well suited to theater.
We talked about this in class the other day. I think this is a little radical in what seems to be a slowly developing timeline of switching over from said technology to another. Kendra points out the effect of cost that comes with switching over to these kinds of lamps though if a company is ready to make the change that is a different story. I feel like making this ban will effectively put smaller companies out of business or in quite the ditch which I'm sure they won't appreciate.
I also agree that banning incandescent lamps is a bad idea right now. The statement provides several good points about this — one in particular that I like is that we don't yet know the full environmental impact of using CFLs instead of incandescent lamps, and one problem that is already becoming apparent with CFLs is that they contain mercury or other hazardous chemicals. Thus, even if CFLs are greener when they are generating light, they do a lot of damage when they end up in a landfill.
Okay I love the environment. I love cute fluffy bunnies and trees and flowers and all of that... but isn't it ridiculous to make incandescent bulbs illegal? I think that as better technologies become available, people will switch anyway... better technology, better savings. Considering theaters can get around so many OSHA requirements, I hope that we'll be okay for a while with the incandescent bulb issue.
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