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EU bans toxic fluorescent lamps at home but keeps door for exports open

(eceee news, 25 Feb 2022) In a regulation published yesterday, the European Commission finally phased out toxic fluorescent lighting across the EU. Once the workhorse of the lighting industry, the Commission concluded that there are superior mercury-free drop-in LED alternatives. But the EU still allows exports of fluorescents, and the Commission currently does not support a global ban of fluorescent lamps under the Minamata Convention on Mercury. It has a month to make up its mind.

The regulations to ban virtually all fluorescent lamps is part of the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive. Fluorescent lamps are banned due to the toxicity of the mercury they contain, but the phase-out will have significant positive climate and energy saving benefits. CLASP, an energy-efficiency non-profit association, calculates that between 2023 and 2035, these measures phasing out fluorescent lamps in Europe will save 54.2 million metric tonnes of CO2, 1.82 metric tonnes of mercury and generate 18.2  billion Euros of Net savings for EU citizens and businesses (lamp costs + electricity).

The ban is long overdue, but has been made based on an analysis on the availability of cost-effective and widely available drop-in products based on mercury light-emitting diode (LED) technology.“As one of the original authors of the RoHS Directive, it gives me great pleasure to see the Commission finally using their authority to take this step,” said Eija-Riitta Korhola, former MEP from Finland. “This is a global first and Europe should be proud, however it is disappointing to see the Commission has not felt the same toxic lighting should also be avoided by people outside of the EU.”

In March, the EU will join delegates from 137 countries – representing more than six billion people – at the UN Minamata Convention on Mercury in Bali to discuss, among other things, whether to ban fluorescent lighting globally. Currently, the Convention has allowances for fluorescent lamps, but proposals submitted by the EU-27 and the African region address these fluorescent exemptions. Notably, the EU proposal is significantly less ambitious than the African proposal.

The EU-27 proposal seeks only to phase-out halophosphate linear fluorescent lamps from the international convention – a product banned in the EU-27 over ten years ago. However, the African region proposal is much closer to existing EU-27 law, removing compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) and all linear fluorescent lamps. While Europe has decided that these common fluorescents targeted in the African proposal are not good enough for EU-citizens, the region still hasn’t made its mind up about voting at the Minamata meeting just one month away.  

If the EU doesn’t to vote in favour of the more ambitious African proposal, this decision would apparently would be in the interest of protecting exports from two fluorescent lamp factories in Germany and Poland. However, a new report from CLASP, shows that remaining fluorescent lamp manufacturing in Europe will lose 80% of their market by 2023; EU domestic market for fluorescents will be gone and major trade partners are also phasing-out fluorescents through separate regulations.

Regardless of the Minamata vote, there will no longer be a viable market for EU-manufactured fluorescents, according to the report. However, the report finds that the EU has an economic opportunity to preserve jobs and lighting exports by transitioning domestic fluorescent manufacturing facilities to LED.

See also previous eceee articles below.

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CLASP is working with the Climate Action Network to circulate a petition calling on the EU-27 and other delegates to the Minamata Convention to support the African Lighting Amendment. If voted in, the proposal would not only eliminate 232 metric tonnes of mercury globally, but would also avoid 3.5 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions from power stations between 2025 and 2050 due to the fact that LEDs are so much more efficient than fluorescent.