UPDATED: Life-cycle study examines total energy used in LEDs, CFLs, and incandescents

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The production and disposal costs for incandescents seems too high. GSL (each): Production = 11 KWH, Disposal = 81 KWH CFL (each): Production = 24 KWH, Disposal = 176 KWH This suggest that it takes only 2 times the energy to make CFL compare to incandescent.CFL is order of magnitude more complex then incandescent . but it only takes 2 times the energy? It also shows that you need to spend 8 times more energy to dispose of incandescent then to make one. That really makes no sense. You can legally throw incandescent bulb into trash. Why would it take 81kWh to dispose of it? CFL, on the other hand requires haz-mat treatment to properly dispose of. AM I the only one who thinks these numbers are total bull?

This "study" seems to leave a lot of details out. Since it was done by OSRAM, you'd think they had a better average for a 40W bulb than 1000 hrs; if it was 1001.5 I'd accept it, but multiplying by 25 instead of 1, I'd hope they could use a true average from a life test of say 1000 to 5000 bulbs before using that number. My college statistics book has some interesting data on life tests on bulbs. Seems those were longer than 1000, throwing off this analysis. Also, were the CFL and LED lifetimes based on actual testing? CFL bulbs can be recycled and many lamp recyclers recover the mercury by a process called retorting. I agree - CFLs are made in China, will LED's be made in the USA?

Short CFL life? Tell me about it! Where I once worked we made some really good quality inverters to allow 15 watt fluoro tubes to run from a 24 vdc supply. We paid close attention to pre-heating the cathodes before the high voltage was applied to the tube. In one particular test that ran for about 6 weeks, on a 3 seconds on, 7 seconds off basis we got over 350,000 starts(!) from the tube before we gave up and decided it was good enough. Tube was still running OK. We then tried it using using no preheat time and the tube would fail in about 2 days. During the test you could see the tube ends gradually going black from the cathode material being splattered on the inside surface of the glass. Gradually the emission would be concentrated in a smaller and smaller area of the filament and it would eventually melt and go open circuit at this point. Back in August 1995 (I write the install date of all my CFLs on them with Texta) I put in a square body Philips PL15 and it went for 11 years. It always preheated the cathodes for about 1/2 second before it struck and lit. Every one I buy now comes on instantly but only lasts about 2 years as the tube ends gradually go black and it it fails.

My recent experience indicates that imported low wattage CFL's like we buy at Home Depot for incandescent replacements cannot reach a life of 25,000 hours. Perhaps 300 - 1000 hours, with the shorter lifespans prevalent in 3-way bulbs. Is first cost of CFL's less than incandescents - NO! I don't know if the short lifetimes are due to design, manufacturing, or usage issues. One usage issue is dirty power, and how it affects the ballasts.

"... but this is a bit of a straw dog." The expression is actually Straw Man, from a flimsy argument one sets up just to knock down easily. Straw Dogs was a really bad 1971 film directed by Sam Peckinpah; where the cliche-confusion came in, I dunno... I'll second Niels Malotaux: in the temperate north, there is no waste heat from incandescent lights in 3 out of 4 seasons -- it all goes to heat the house anyway, reducing furnace energy use from natural gas and hydroelectric. This is energy whack-a-mole: knock it down here, it pops up there...

In the Netherlands, most houses are heated in Winter, using thermostats to keep the temperature constant. This means that in Winter (and most of Spring and Autumn), the excess heat of the incandescent lamp is not wasted, but used in stead of the regular heating system. In Summer time, the sun shines much longer, so the lamps aren't used as much as in the darker days. Can we say that in these cases, at least half of the heat produced by the lamps isn't wasted, but used in stead of the energy used by the heating system? I assume that this is the case in many other areas of the world as well. Why don't we see this effect mentioned in such an assessment? Is it willfully ignored?

As to the lifetime of CFLs... I've had some running in outdoor lights for around 5 years now. These are low (4W???) units that are turned on at dusk and off in the morning. I figure that, on average, they are on 4,000 hours/year, or 20,000 hours total so far, maybe more. I don't remember exactly when I put them in. Now these bulbs get a fair amount of convection cooling, to that helps their lifetime. OTOH, I have tried some of the recessed ceiling CFLs, and they have failed on me quicker than the incandescents I was replacing. After reading some articles, I concluded this was due to overheating of the electronics in the base of the bulb because of the lack of air flow.

I have purchased a number of capacitively ballasted LED lamps for 110V use and found them to be terrible designs - ALL failed in under 100 hours. So, while the theoretical life of LED lighting could be >25,000 hours (and this would be great!), the zeal to get the cost to even 3X over CCFL has largely sacrificed that reliability. I also concur that the CCFL bulbs appear to statistically fail in a shorter time than stated (no data, but I shouldn't have seen any failures yet by the numbers and I have seen about a 20% failure rate).

we also fail to factor in the trade deficit contribution of $3 made-china CFL vs $0.50 US incandescents.

Just wanted to add comment on low lifetime for CFLs. Perhaps someone can point to a reliable 'brand', but the CFLs I have purchased lasted no longer than incandescents at nearly 10x the cost and hazardous waste disposal issues.....

Mercury?? Every industry creates waste products that need to go somewhere. China scrubs some mercury from its coal powerplant emissions, puts it into CFL bulbs, and ships it to NorthAmerica for a profit. Business would call it a win-win situation!!! There aren't many remaining lawful applications for mercury -- very few "Mercury_arc_valve" (wikipedia it, a mercury pool rectifier) in use now.

Recycling does nothing about the mercury though!

For those, like me, who didn't know, GLS means: General Lighting Service - a trade name for the category of mains voltage bulbs. At least that's what I found on some random web site using google.

Does this also comprehend the cost and energy required to manufacture the cooling elements required for LED lights?

I don't understand how they can compare a 40 W incandescent to 8 W CFL and LED, as they do not provide anywhere near the same lumens or lighting. The CFLs also have a much higher environmental impact during manufacture and disposal. Incandescent lamps are actually recyclable too. LEDs seem to have good hours, but mine and others anecdotal evidence shows that CFLs are more expensive, but are failing as soon or quicker than incandescent lamps.