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With the EU announcing plans to introduce a Europe-wide ban on GLS Lamps from 2009, Gary Walker, Product Manager for Lighting at Newey & Eyre, asks how the lighting industry and British consumers will face up to life without the incandescent lamp?

As bright ideas go, it doesn’t get much more obvious than banning the GLS lamp. The humble tungsten filament lamp has done a brilliant job lighting up the world for the past 120 years, but with more energy efficient alternatives now widely available, its days are surely numbered.

Incandescent lamps waste 95% of the energy they consume as heat. An energy saving fluorescent lamp requires five times less electricity to do much the same job and saves users approximately £9 to £12 per lamp each year in energy costs and lasts up to 12 times as long.

Their demise began early 2007 when Australia declared it would ban incandescent lamps within three years, which it claims will reduce the country’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by 800,000 tonnes.

Since then the EU has made its intentions known and two of the UK’s major retailers have fired the first salvoes in a bid to replace the GLS with energy efficient fluorescents.

The Co-operative Group became the first supermarket chain to announce that it would review its range of lamps and would stop selling tungsten filament lamps in 50 of its stores by autumn, with a view to removing them entirely from all of its sites. Tesco has also set itself a target of selling 10 million energy saving lamps in the coming year, up from 2 million last year.

Australia declared it would ban incandescent lamps… which it claims will reduce the country’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by 800,000 tonnes.

But fluorescents do have their critics. According to the Daily Mail, the Department For Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ own figures show that less than half the fittings in the UK can accept a compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) and concluded that Britain’s homeowners will pay upwards of £3billion for replacements.

Others argue that price will be a source of contention, but as manufacturers step up production to replace the 130 million GLS lamps sold each year in the UK (and competition increases), costs should reduce, even though fewer will be installed because of their longer life. By and large, shape and size have been addressed and while the ‘cold’ colour of CFLs has been improved with the latest generation of lamps, they will never be able to replicate the ‘warmth’ of GLS lamps.

Another issue that will affect lighting quality is dimming. At present there are no domestic dimmers for CFLs. Megaman does offer its DorS Dimming replacement for 50W Halogen spotlights, which with four pre-programmed brightness levels can be used with an existing switch. The likes of Osram, Philips and GE, are all said to be working on dimmable CFLs, but have yet to unveil anything.

Those against the ban also point to the issue of recycling as fluorescents contain mercury and require careful disposal. But as the environmental lobby keenly point out, three times this amount of mercury is released into the atmosphere through the burning of coal to provide the extra electricity needed to power an incandescent. As to whether the lamp recycling industry will cope with the ramped up demand, only time will tell.

No doubt the debate will continue and it is difficult to predict how many of these concerns will actually be realised, but any ban would need to be carefully thought out.

For instance, while 40W, 60W and 100W GLS lamps probably account for 80% of the incandescent market, would a ban mean we have to throw out all our smaller ornamental lamps and wall lights that use candle and golf ball lamps? And what about low voltage tungsten halogen downlighters, which are extremely energy hungry?

Hopefully, in the short term such lamps will remain below the radar of the EU bureaucrats until adequate replacements have been developed. And that might not be as far fetched as it sounds, as GE is apparently developing an incandescent lamp that matches the effi ciency of CFLs – and, of course, we have yet to fully exploit the potential of LEDs.

Newey & Eyre is one of the UK’s leading electrical wholesalers with a network of over 160 branches providing electrical supplies for the trade. For more information and to order online visit http://www.neweysonline.co.uk