Compact Fluorescent Bulbs and Mercury
A "reality check" from Popular Mechanics:
How much mercury do power plants emit to light a CFL?
About 50 percent of the electricity produced in the U.S. is generated by coal-fired power plants. When coal burns to produce electricity, mercury naturally contained in the coal releases into the air. In 2006, coal-fired power plants produced 1,971 billion kilowatt hours (kwh) of electricity, emitting 50.7 million tons of mercury into the air—the equivalent amount of mercury contained in more than 9 billion CFLs (the bulbs emit zero mercury when in use or being handled).Approximately 0.0234 mg of mercury—plus carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide—releases into the air per 1 kwh of electricity that a coal-fired power plant generates. Over the 7500-hour average range of one CFL, then, a plant will emit 13.16 mg of mercury to sustain a 75-watt incandescent bulb but only 3.51 mg of mercury to sustain a 20-watt CFL (the lightning equivalent of a 75-watt traditional bulb). Even if the mercury contained in a CFL was directly released into the atmosphere, an incandescent would still contribute 4.65 more milligrams of mercury into the environment over its lifetime.
I'd be a lot more convinced if they weren't relying exclusively on mercury emission figures for coal-fired power plants. Last time I checked, coal was still the cheapest means for generating power, which means that all other things being equal, it's the less-polluting (and more expensive) means that will be idled by power savings from CF bulbs. Even if there is some reduction in output from coal-fired plants, the fact that PM's analysis appears to assume all reductions will be from coal-fired plants makes the analysis flawed at best.
Beyond that, PM also fails to address one of the major concerns of those of us opposed to CF mandates, namely where the mercury is emitted/located. Before we mandate the use of CF bulbs, as some governments are already moving towards, I'd like to see an analysis of the environmental impact of CF bulbs in the residential waste stream. Because despite the fact that CFs are not supposed to be simply thrown away, I suspect that most people buying them don't realize this. So is it more efficient to remove mercury at the source of a coal-fired plant, or to have to deal with mercury clean up in hundreds (or thousands) of landfills? And what of the Chinese factories where these bulbs are made? Are they included in the calculation of how much mercury is released into the environment by incandescents vs. CFs?
Source: Compact Fluorescent Bulbs and Mercury: Reality Check - Popular Mechanics
via Instapundit, who's a fan of CFs. More power to him, just so long as I remain free to choose otherwise (I should note that Reynolds is also opposed to mandates).