Photo courtesy of fide26 Negocios

A Bright IdeaUnder the Sustainable Light Program, 47 million incandescent light bulbs will be replaced with energy saving Philips lamps in homes across Mexico.

by GUStavoaréchiGa

LIGHT FOR EVERYONE

According to the Electric Power Sav-ing Trust Fund (FIDE), as of Novem-ber 24, approximately 2.5 million Federal Electricity Commission users had traded in their incandescent light bulbs for energy saving ones under the Sustainable Light Program, which has handed out over 10 million compact fluorescent lamps, making it the most extensive initiative of its kind in the world to date.

The incandescent light bulbs we’ve all been using for years –the traditional ones which have a metal filament wire en-cased in a glass globe– were in-

vented more than 120 years ago by Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, although it was Thomas Alva Edison who had the foresight to patent the invention in the US and proclaim himself its author. But that’s old hat, just like the incan-descent light bulb, which hasn’t undergone any major transformations since 1930.

The latest technological development in the lighting department are compact fluo-rescent lamps (CFLs), which will be pro-moted by Mexico’s federal government un-der its Sustainable Light Program –the most ambitious lamp substitution program to be implemented worldwide.

During the first phase of the program, some 23 million traditional 100W light bulbs will be replaced with 23W Philips energy saving lamps and by the time it comes to an end in 2012, 47.2 million CFLs will have been distributed throughout the country.

If your bi-monthly electricity consump-tion is less than 250 kilowatts, you can trade in up to four incandescent bulbs for four white-light energy saving lamps manufac-tured by Philips, the supplier that won the tender. Simply locate one of the 1200-plus exchange centers that have been set up na-tionwide to receive your free lamps.

It is estimated that the program will pre-vent 2.78 million tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere –equiva-lent to 36% of the carbon dioxide emitted ev-ery year by all the cars in Mexico City– and reduce oil consumption by 7.44 million bar-rels a year – equivalent to all the crude re-fined in Mexico over a period of six days.

“As you can see on the electricity bill sent out by the CFE (Federal Electric-ity Commission), electricity consumed by Mexican homes is heavily subsidized by the federal government. It relieves the bur-den on the family budget but it requires public resources that belong to all Mexi-cans. Reducing electricity consumption by replacing lamps will allow the federal gov-ernment to redirect these funds to other programs and projects for the benefit of all Mexicans,” says Demián Sánchez Yeskett, consultant coordinator at the Presidential Office.

“When all 47.2 million CLFs are in use, the federal government will see annual savings of approximately 369.5 billion usd –twice the funds allocated to the Crèche Program this year, more than what will be spent on the 2011 Food Program that repre-sents a lifeline for 670,000 Mexican fami-lies living on or below the poverty line and roughly the same as what has been chan-neled into the refurbishment of some 3,400 public spaces over the last four years.”

Spain, India and Cuba have implement-ed similar programs. In India, approxi-mately three million energy saving lamps were distributed, compared to nine million replaced in Cuba and Spain.

In Mexico, some 5.7 million families are expected to save money on their electricity bills as a result of the program.

How can changing an incandescent light bulb for an energy saving one help the plan-et? The answer is as clear as day: lighting accounts for a fifth of the electricity gener-ated worldwide and represents 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. n

www.luzsustentable.gob.mx

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