Some people disagree with the legislation regarding lighting efficiency because they are against government regulation.  Others don't feel there is an urgent need to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions.  However, even those of us who aren't ideologically opposed to the laws and agree that global warming is real problem may still be hesitant to accept that the new standards are justified due to the hidden costs they may have.  Do you all think the standards will have a positive or negative affect on our overall well-being?  Here are a few potential unintended consequences, at least with regard to the U.S.  Can you think of others?

• Moderately efficient general purpose lamps such as 100W incandescents or 4' 34W CW fluorescents may be replaced with less efficient specialty lamps which meet the guidelines such as rough service lamps or 40W CWX lamps.
• Fluorescent lamps which don't pass the TCLP test must be classified as hazardous waste, which encourages manufactures to lower mercury content thereby cutting back on the amount of mercury released into the environment.  However, if low Hg lamps don't last as long, the disposal rate will actually increase, reducing or possibly eliminating any benefits.  
• Requiring a new ballast to operate a higher efficiency lamp will increase the amount of PCBs released, at least in the short term, due to the inevitable improper disposal of some of the old ballasts.
• High efficiency fluorescent lamps require a larger quantity of rare earth elements in their phosphors, some of which are in limited supply and available from few sources (primarily China).
• Mercury vapor lamps may be the least efficient in the HID family, but they are also long lasting.  Longer lasting lamps means less waste to be disposed of and less fuel used by the vehicles that maintain streetlights.  
• Increased use of CFLs may result in more mercury being released into the environment.
• A shift to more efficient bulbs may result in loss of jobs domestically, because energy efficient lamps often require more manual labor, making these lamps cheaper to produce overseas.
• Forced retrofits due to bans might not result in the same degree of savings.  For example, I'm increasingly seeing HPS and MH spot replacements in existing chains of MV streetlights, but the new streetlights are frequently the same wattage as the MV lights they replaced.

In my opinion, we should be moving to more efficient light sources, but I don't know if the current approach of banning specific items because of the technology they use or their lumens per watt rating is necessarily best.  I wouldn't recommend that we go back to lighting our freeways with mercury vapor, but maybe it is still a good choice for rural areas or back alleys where maintenance is costly.  In many cases, there are acceptable high efficiency alternatives to traditional incandescents, but the ordinary bulbs are still a good option for some applications, such as a closet light with low usage in terms of hours but one that is frequently switched.  New buildings shouldn't be using T12 fixtures with magnetic ballasts, but I see no reason why a homeowner with such a fixture that has such a negligible impact on energy use should be required to buy a new ballast.

When moving from incandescent lamps to CFLs, the lamps may contains mercury, but the average mercury emission from the coal, oil and natural gas power plants will be considerably reduced for the amount of the mercury that CFLs contains.
The direct danger from the mercury in CFLs, is land and water pollution when the lamps aren't disposed correctly and mercury poisoning if the lamp break and the room have no ventilation.

I am all for greener environment, and against regulations

I think that all light sources should be available and legal, and it should be up to the installer to choose appropriate and efficient light source for the task

The environmental impact of a light source IS NOT equal to its luminous efficacy. There are a lot more factors to count in :

 - Manufacturing and recycling/discarding the lamp takes resources, energy, hazardous materials etc. too

 - Installing the lamp can take resources, energy, pollution etc. too

 - Maintenance or replacement of light fixtures can take resources, energy, pollution etc. too

 - Light pollution is an issue too



Now consider some cases :

 - Replacing EOL lamps and ballasts is pollution (either directly or as resources consumed by the recycling facility), manufacturing new ones is pollution too. High mercury content and full power fluorescents can last for many times longer than their "green" options, and overall amount of pollution by mercury, PHOSPHORS that are toxic yet nobody seems to count them, energy used by the lamp manufacturer etc is lower

 - Driving the cherry picker truck more often to relamp, and especially driving it to make spot replacements, pollutes the air more than hundreds / thousands of burning hours of the lamp. Lower efficacy but more reliable lamp requires less replacements

 - Shipping lamps (from the factory in the far end of the world) makes pollution, in fuel and in packaging materials

 - A lamp running on an off-grid setup powered from solar or wind. The energy used by the lamp is not harmfull to the environment, but the lamp manufacture is. In this case, INCANDESCENT might be the greenest option since it's so simple and contains no hazardous materials, and by reducing its efficiency even further we can make it live as long as we wish

 - A mercury lamp is less efficient than HPS, but can give same visibility at lower light level due to white light (at least thats my eveluation of MV lit places)

 - A lamp in staircase etc. is used for short periods (often <1min at a time) but must give instant light. A CFL will be too dim, so either a higher power CFL will be installed (reducing the energy savings) or left on all the time (power waste more than saving). Perhaps a halogen might no tbe suitable either since the halogen might not work properly in too short periods, but i am unsure about that

 - A MV makes less noticable light pollution in the sky

 - In green area (grass, trees etc) MV light collor reflects better from the green, which makes the area appear better lit with MV than LPS / HPS / Incandescent

 - In a place with a lot of power surges or lightning strikes, a fixture without electronics (and without too sensitives lamps) would be preferred, which rules out all HF ballasts, most MH, most LPS, and all high power HPS



But for many places the newer light sources are best, so they should be promoted but not where they are inappropriate

Halogen lamps are suitable for frequent switching, because they are a variation of an incandescent lamp.
I uses only fluorescents and LEDs in my room at my hostel, to save energy:
1. Two CFLs one of computer table lighting and one in the spot above my bed. The spot (Which have Osram Duluxstar 8W/827) mounted upward to ensure that the CFL burns base down and the heat from the tube willn't enter to the ballast, ensuring that the tube will fail before the ballast. The table lamp (Which currently have Hyundai TEVA 20W helical CFL) is without it enclosed bulb shaped glass lampshade, burns base down and is connected via the power strip (Which is used also by my inkjet printer, cable modem and the speakers) to a surge protector (GPT Protector SC9L made in Israel) to protect the electronic ballast of the CFLs installed on it from lightning and surges.
2. One T5 fluorescent lamp of 21W on my ceiling (Currently Hyundai 865, the next will be Osram FH 21W/840 HE made in Germany.
3.Orange LED nightlight of 0.4W (Hyundai) with a single 5mm high brightness orange LED, photocell and capacitive driver.

If the energy production is considered as the destroying the planet, so the need to reduce it's consumption is strong, would not be way better to redirect the investment money (so in other words available effort) into areas, where we can, for the same money, reduce the consumption the most?

If I take the regular household, the majority of energy consumption (of the house itself; about 80%, while lighting is about 10..15% even with old incandescents) is in heating and or cooling. Wouldn't make better sense to reduce the thermal management energy consumption by 20% then lighting consumption by 90% (to gain the same energy saving effect)? What I've seen in US and south (Spain) and west Europe (Belgium, France), the thermal management consumption would be quite easily (without excessive costs and crazyness like forced recuperative ventilation) possible to reduce by at least 30..60% (in colder European regions this would be about 10..20%), in the  you obviously can not gain anything close in lighting...

And I didn't speak yet about the transportation, as in developed world this is the most energy hungry part of the everyday life - I would guess in the average it consume more then the thermal management, but I do not see here much room for improvement (without considerably influencing the living standards).

And generally I think there is quite a room in improving the efficiency of the electricity generation (so lowering the emission):
Each electrical system in every moment have to have the production equal to the consumption. This balance should be maintained, or the system would collapse.

And majority of network systems around the globe are designed so, the consumer side does what it wants, while the balance is maintained on the generation side. Most of the load may be predicted, so allow the schedule of the production plants to be scheduled so, they work in the most efficient mode. But there is about few percent of the load, what you don't know, how large it actually would be. This ask for extra production capacity in such mode, then it can quickly respond and so have enough power capability margin. This ability is not for free - usually it mean the efficiency of such power plants is way worse, so for the same produced energy they emit way more waste (either smoke, heat or another form, does not matter as much, all damage the environment to some extent). And this situation get worse with the legally mandated preference of the "renewable energy sources", whose availability can not be controlled, only to some extend predicted (so these days the wind and solar power does not save any gram of CO2 emission, as it's use in present way ask for higher capacity of the stabilization plants, what even if not generating actual power emit about the same as when not using the wind and solar power).
But is it really necessary to have all that correction ability on the production side? Because if somewhere is sudden increase of the load, the balance may be maintained as well, if this would be compensated out by load reduction somewhere else - so it would not need the extra "ready to use" generating capacity. E.g. the exact moment of turn ON or OFF of the aircon compressor may be on-demand (based on the actual network power balance) delayed or advanced by few minutes (if the aircon would be specifically designed to perform this stabilization role, even way more), what would have no effect on the user, but if this aggregated over the large region, it may (in hot areas) fully replace the need for the inefficient short-term stabilzation power plants.
Of course, this would need a way, how to communicate the required actions to the millions of appliances, but this is getting cheaper (e.g. in smaller networks, like UK, the necessary information is already present in all sockets - the variation of the mains frequency; but in larger networks, where the power lines capacity have to be controlled, it would ask for separate signalling).
This ask for a little investment on the consumer side, but as the excessive power generation is VERY expensive, the variable cost of the power (it would depend on actual balance, so when there is excess power generated, it would be cheap, while when there is lack of generated power, the power would be expensive) would be very strong motivation (without any bans for incompatible equipment) for home owners to look for the equipment able to utilize mainly the "cheap" power, so bottom line help to stabilize the network...
But this would ask for some legal changes - and I'm missing any activity in that area...


So in this perspective the lighting bans are really only the excuse, what in fact eat up the available money (and engineering and manufacturing capacity), that could be way more efficiently used in other ways to reduce our impact to the planet.
I'm convinced, then the move towards less pollution could be "enforced" more efficiently when making the pollution itself expensive (e.g. the energy in the time of it's lack, energy in general), then the natural economy rules would find the most efficient way to reduce the emissions...
The problem with the pollution to it's biggest extent is, then the energy is about the cheapest in the history, mainly due to the advances of it's production and fuel mining (oil,...)

Even when I disagree the MV last longer (the economical EOL is, when the light output drop to ~70%, then their life is about the same as HPS; not when they are APPARENTLY dim or fully dead), they pose way less maintenance fuel requirements due to their well predictable aging and practically no need for any urgent fixes, so the maintenance schedule for the whole region may be prepared and optimized in advance, while there is no need to at-hoc deviate from it (so per the same crew transport costs they are able to do all work on way more fixtures).

The problem with these regulations is that they take efficiency as being THE deciding factor with regards to everything.  Efficiency is just one aspect of looking at a lighting system, and in many cases it should be a lower priority or not even be a consideration.

In many applications incandescent is the only light source that can be used, as it is unaffected by frequent switching or low/high ambient temperatures, has almost no warmup time, has very good optical properties as the filament shape can be made to interface almost any optical system and has excellent color rendering.  Incandescent is also the only light source type where there are almost no applications where they cannot be used.

Compact fluorescent lamps are niche products, and cannot be used safely in many incandescent applications.  By pushing for their use regardless of this fact, they will at best lead to people being forever put off and never using them even where they can be used and at worst cost lives and property from their often catastrophic failure.

Electronic fluorescent ballasts are often very unreliable, and the high operating temperatures of many fixtures do not help this.  While T8 lamps are more efficient than T12s, they will not start as reliably in cold temperatures.  A better solution would be using magnetic T8 ballasts as the tiny reduction in efficiency is more than made up for by the ballasts lasting decades instead of weeks.  T12s would be used wherever T8s are not suitable.

One big problem with the efficiency push is that the underlying argument for it, namely gorebull worming, has been shown to be a scam that would make Bernie Madoff look like a schoolyard game of three card monte.  Not to mention the fact that this idea of 'government knows best' has been responsible for some of the worst atrocities in human history and the deaths of no fewer than 325,000,000 people in the past century.

Let people decide what lights are best for their various and sundry needs and keep the feds out of it.

Global warming is not a scam, and efficiency is an important factor.

But is it the only factor ? NO !

And if instead of using a lamp X, you need to drive the truck more often to deliver and install more efficient lamp Y, maybe (considering the CO2 from the truck, other cars used, lamp production and disposal, night sky pollution . . .) lamp Y is not really better for the envirnment than lamp X

Problem is, those politicians dont see beyond the electric meter (that they pay for). The factories in China, premature failed lamps, environmental damage, mercury, dark sky pollution . . . ? Never heard of

Get them to understand what mercury is - Get Alto's in return

Get them to understand what light pollution is - Get FCO fixtures in return to replace older fixtures. Problem is not the fixtures being FCO, but those new fixtures run HPSes of higher watts than the MVs they replaced (shouldn't it be opposite ?), so the amount of light reflected off the ground alone is causing quite a bit of pollution, And its nasty yellow polution, not some white

I think ceramic MH lamps should replace HPS lamps. They have similar efficiency for a given wattage to HPS, but produce a white light (Usually warm white).
In Hadar city center in Haifa, there are Schreder Furyo lanterns with Osram Powerstar HCI-TT (150W) and HCI-ET (70W) 827 CMH lamps. and we have in Haifa also Indal 3eInternational Aliance with 250W quartz MH lamps.
The makeover of the Fivep Oyster lanterns that happened within the road that starts from Carmel Center to Horev Center in Haifa was totally an effort for free and above all, waste of lanterns that many of them were GOOD (Meaning both operation status and lens transparency and cleaning): The municipality replaced TENS of 1990" AEG Koffer (many had browned out polycarbonate) 150 and 2000" Philips Stradasole 530 (All had clear and clean lens) lanterns that had 150W HPS lamps with new Fiver Oyster lanterns with the same lamps: HPS of 150W. Nothing improved: Only the moving from semicutoff to full cutoff!!!!! (The Stradasole 530 are cutoff, like sag lens cobraheads [TuDor], and the Koffer 150 are semi-cutoff, like drop lens cobraheads [Silverliner])
They could put CMH lamps in these Oysters to reduce light pollution and to get a white light in similar efficiency as HPS lamps. (Most CMH have up to 100 lm/w of white light, high efficiency [But slightly reduced CRI] CMH such as Philips Cosmopolis and GE Streetwise have up to 110 lm/w).

Yea and how about lamp life ? Does a CMH get anywhere near the 5-10 years of a good HPS or 10+ years of a good MV ?

About cosmos, they are proprietary, so i wouldn't even consider them as an option

(The Stradasole 530 are cutoff, like sag lens cobraheads [TuDor], and the Koffer 150 are semi-cutoff, like drop lens cobraheads [Silverliner])

Actually Tudors were also available in semi cutoff and OV 25s were also available in FCO and technically both are considered to be part of the Silverliner family.

Joseph: Most of the OV-25 silverliners that i have seen at photos in LG and GoL were of the regular drop lenses semi-cutoff.
Ash: CMH for outdoor lighting, have usually more life than quartz MH lamps.
Actually, streets in Haifa that lit with Koffer 250 and 70 with mercury lamps are usually very dark.
Also, the roads near the street of our friends in Rosh Pina are relatively dark as many lanterns have MV lamps, and the ones that have HPS lamps, have 70W HPS with internal glow starters operated with the existing 80W MV ballasts, resulting in an operation at 60W and a dimmer light. Most of the fixtures are Gaash Mars and GEC Z8xxx clones.

Dark maybe, but notice it : Did you see clearly where you are going ? Thats all the lighting there is for, and it is sufficient

IMHO HPS would not give as good visibility with the same amount of light, because it is yellow and not white, so you still need hiher output HPS to get the same visibility, so you did not actually save energy

A white MH would give hig visibility at low power (as MV or better), but will they really install MH of lower power than HPS ? i think no, they'll want to keep the place over-illuminated



With lamp life i asked how it compares to HPS and MV, not to QMH

CMH have usually less life than HPS and MV lamps. But the lifespan of CMH lamps for outdoor lighting improved (GE CMH lamps, [Including their StreetWise CMH answer to Philips CosmoPolis] have 15,000 to 24,000 rated life).
The roads in Haifa that have 3eInternational Alliance lanterns with 250W QMH lamps (4000K and 6500K), aren't overlit at all. However, they could put CMH of 150W to get the same amount of light in less wattage.