One Billion (CFL) Bulbs

On a recent All Things Considered on National Public Radio, there was an interview with Brian Huyser who, after watching a show about global warming on the Discovery Channel, started the One Billion Bulbs website . His goal is to motivate people in the US to repalce 1,000,000,000 incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs - resulting in significant savings on electric bills as well as a reduction in global warming pollution.

The project is broken into phases and is currently on Phase 2 - meaning that between 50,000 and 100,000 CFLs have been installed. The interactive map on the home page indicates that Maine is already over its Phase 2 goal. I didn't know that we had a goal, but I am glad that we reached it!!

Signing up is easy. It only requires setting up a free account and recording the number of bulbs that you've installed, the wattage of the old incandescent bulbs, and the wattage of the new CFLs. After entering the CFL information, the site will calculate how much money you will save ($107.05 for one set of CFLs that I entered) and the amount of CO2 saved (964.56 lbs).

Take a few minutes to join the effort. It is easy to think "How much difference can I make?" When you consider the cummulative effect of just replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLS on the One Billion Bulbs website, you can see just how big of a difference is possible. It gives me hope that we can successfully reduce our energy usage and combat global warming.

Click here for the transcript from the 2/8 NPR show All Things Considered.