CA Ranks 38 out of 50 one Environmental Stat

So much for being the "green state." According to a the 18 Seconds website put up by Yahoo that tracks state by state levels of adoptions of Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFL), CA ranks 38th out of 48 (no data for Alaska and Haiwaii).

Lighting is said to account for 20% of the electric bill in the average household and it's a key area that's being targeted to reduce energy consumption. A couple of governments have already announced plans to phase out all incandescent light bulbs. One of them was Australia. I can't remember the other one.

I couldn't find study information or any supporting data for the figures that were published on that website, but given that the 18 Seconds thing is a major campaign launched with Earth Day and backed by Yahoo and Nielsen, I'd assume that the numbers aren't entirely without merit. Even if the numbers are significantly skewed, I'm surprised that California is so far down the chart. The entire west coast ranks poorly followed by Massachusetts coming in dead last. So much for the environmentally conscious reputations of the more liberal states.

Are you replacing your bulbs with energy saving CFL bulbs?

Here's a link to that website:
http://www.18seconds.org

I've always liked the light given off by incandescent bulbs, but I think fluorescent lightbulbs are becoming much nicer these days - it seems like the quality of light is a bit warmer now. I use natural daylight most of the day, but I've been meaning to switch more of the lamps in our house over to fluorescent for use at night.

I have been working to replace all our bulbs with fluorescents. As I have gotten down to the last three, it has gotten a bit challenging. I have researched what I believe will be the answer, and once I've finished, I'll list what I have found out for others.

I've replaced all of the indoor lightbulbs but I'm not sure that they make them for outdoor lights. I replaced the ones I use the most over a year ago and didn't notice a difference in my PG&E bill. I'm pretty good about not wasting electricity so I don't think there's much room for improvement. All of our appliances are energy-saver ones, except for the really old furnace. We did install exta insulation in the attic a year ago and it helped a little. The only thing left to do is install solar energy but I can barely afford the mortgage payments right now.

I'm surprised that the Pacific Northwest did so poorly, especially considering that Seattle and Portland, as well as parts of the Bay Area, are very progressive.

There might be other reasons for the Pacific northwest to rank poorly. The needs of a high level of economic activity might play a role because it seems like the sleepier land-locked regions tended to rank highest in using low engery lighting.

I've had some CFL bulbs in the house for years. I got my first CFL bulb over 15 years ago. My dad's an electrical engineer and he came home one day with a bunch of funky looking light bulbs and gave one to me. It took like 10 seconds to turn on. You'd have to stand there in the dark as it flickered a few times and eventually turned on.

Most of the high usage lights inside our house uses CFL bulbs. I was a bit hesitant to use one outside too, but I've had a CFL bulb at the front doorday for a couple of years now and had no problems with it. I don't think I'm ever going to lose incandescent or halogen bulbs all together though, but I usually only use them for task lighting.