Santa Fe Arts and Culture Magazine: View Article

How Many Santa Feans Does It Take To Change A Lightbulb?

By: Ouida MacGregor

reasons to change to compact florescent bulbs

Comparison of Energy Costs, see PDF link below

You say I should replace the perfectly good light bulbs I’ve always used?

I want reasons to change to compact florescent bulbs:

First of all, lighting consumes one fourth of the electricity generated in the US.

In addition, consider:

• More than 90% of the energy consumed by a standard incandescent bulb is given off as heat; only 10% as light.  A Compact Florescent (CF) bulb is 35 to 66 percent efficient.  If every U.S. household converted three bulbs to CF's we could eliminate 11 existing fossil-fuel-powered plants.
• Compact Florescent bulbs cost 1/10th as much as their counterparts because they last 10 to 13 times longer.
• Compact Florescent bulbs are 75% cheaper to operate. For example, the florescent counterpart of a 100-watt bulb uses only 23 watts because it produces more light and less heat.
• Compact bulbs help protect your and the planet's health. Santa Fe's electricity comes from the San Juan Generating Plant.  It burns dirty coal (sub-bituminous) coal, supplied by BHP Billington from the San Juan Mine. In 1997 PNM's plant produced 14.5 MILLION TONS OF CO2 greenhouse gas, or 41% of the CO2 produced by electric generation in our state. 
• Compact Florescent bulbs reduce CO2 emissions because they use less fossil fuel. Right now private groups have plans to build 153 new coal-fired plants, speculating that energy consumption will continue to increase.  Those plants are expected to increase the nation's CO2 emissions 43% by 2030 at the very time when global warming necessitates reducing CO2 emissions.
• Compact Florescent bulbs save water. We are about to spend $200 million to harvest our 5300 acre feet of San Juan/Chama waters. Even though the SJ/C diversion is in Colorado, during drought years, if the SJ/Chama rivers are low, all users will be impacted.  We must compete with SJ/Chama downstream users, including PNM (20,200 acre feet of water) and BHP Billington (51,600 ac ft) as well as the Navajo Irrigation Project and the Jicarilla Tribe (which leases another 16,000 ac ft of water to PNM if it needs it). Paper water rights are nice; wet water is what really counts.
• (Bonus possibility) If enough people converted to Compact Florescent Bulbs, Santa Fe may be spared the huge new overhead power line marching across the South side of town.