Estimating the impact of labelling high quality compact fluorescent lamps on the energy consumption for lighting in the residential sector

G. Zissis, R. Ruscassié, and M. Aubès, LAPLACE, Université de Toulouse, France

Keywords

compact fluorescent lamps, quality and labelling, residential lighting, energy consumption scenarios

Abstract

European Climate Change Programme (ECCP) identified residential lighting as an important area, which could result in cost-effective savings of 7 Mtonnes of CO2 by 2010. However, the residential lighting market is still dominated by inefficient incandescence lamps. Market research indicated that to achieve durable market transformation and to substantially increase the use of Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) in this sector, it is essential to market attractive and good quality CFLs. One of the conclusions is that after a considerable number of promotion and rebate schemes, organised by national energy agencies, energy utilities and lamp manufacturers, the number of CFLs in household remains marginal. A first reason of pouting CFLs is directly linked to the poor quality of some products that standard customer may find in the European market. One of the objectives of the project EnERLIn (Energy Efficient Residential Lighting Initiative, EIE-05-0176) supported by European Commission (SAVE program) is to establish a list of criteria that should fulfil high quality CFLs and to propose a standard testing protocol. Both criteria list and procedure should be based on scientific arguments taking into account existing technology limitations. The proposed protocol could then be used for labelling high quality products and thus set customer’s mind in rest. The use of a CFL Quality Charter instead of imposing new standards has the advantage to be easier to adopt and may phase-out low quality product just by exploring end-user behaviour. The first objective of the present paper is to give a draft of the criteria and of the proposed protocol. Then we will examine the impact of marketing “labelled” high quality CFLs by elaborating scenarios for energy consumption for lighting in residential sector. In those scenarios we propose to extrapolate market size using existing growth rates “filtered” by end-user behaviour (“evolutional”, “green” or “consumerist” cases are examined).