Last Friday, on Chief Minister’s talkback, Jon Stanhope let himself be monstered by a crank who thought street lighting was a waste of greenhouse emissions.
One suspects that could be the motivation for an announcement of progress in converting the city’s street lighting over to energy efficient light globes.
No mention of whether we’ve gone with the low-mercury globes or if we have a plan to deal with it. But that’s no different from most other users of CFLs.
They’re not going to be CFLs that they’re talking about. The lights they’re replacing aren’t incandescent to begin with, and based on my limited knowledge I’d guess the new ones are high-pressure sodium lamps. And in fact, at a further punt, I’d wager a lot of those being replaced are in fact mercury vapour lamps, so the only question in that case is what to do with the existing mercury that we’re getting rid of.
Further reading here.
CFLs. That gonna come back and bite us in a decade or two.
I must confess I am a fan of streetlights. I am also in favour of using energy efficient globes.