As part of a national energy-saving (and money-saving!) initiative, the government of Barbados will be distributing free fluorescent lightbulbs to households across the country:
Under the new Energy Smart Fund, local households will receive, free of cost, compact fluorescent light bulbs in an effort to rid the island of their outdated, ineffective and costly incandescent counterpart. This was revealed by CEO of Enterprise Growth Fund Limited (EGFL), Timothy Simmons, speaking with the media at their head office yesterday.
…
Simmons insisted, “The idea [of the] compact fluorescent represents a fairly low cost and impactful way to generate energy savings at the level of household and the Fund will have widespread impact because one could potentially impact on 100 000 households if this initiative is done the way in which we envision. A significant number of households will be impacted and that, perhaps, will start a trend towards people using more energy efficient lighting because the difference in the savings of between an incandescent bulb and the use of a fluorescent bulb, over time, is substantial. This would not only impact at the level of the household in terms of savings in electricity costs, but it will also save significant foreign exchange over time for Barbados.”
Get more information in the full article from the Barbados Advocate.
A similar programme was implemented in The Bahamas earlier this year: Bahamian government seeks to reduce residential energy consumption. My main concern about the Barbadian programme is that the news I’ve seen about it so far does not include any information about plans that will be made to safely dispose of the fluorescent bulbs, which contain mercury.
[Photo: Horia Varlan]
