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• Household lighting accounts for 10 to 15% of total energy use.
• Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs) use two-thirds less electricity than incandescent bulbs to produce the same amount of light.
• 70% of BC Hydro residential customers have at least one CFL in use.
• The average number of CFLs installed in B.C. homes is 6.9.
• There are over 7,000,000 CFLs installed by BC Hydro residential customers.
• CFLs save on average 53 W (power) or 50 kWh per year (energy) – the total energy savings for all CFLs in B.C. is 430 GWh and $27 million dollars a year.
• BC Hydro is the leader in North America for the number of CFLs installed per household.

Types of Light Sources

Incandescent

Incandescent bulbs are the most common home lighting. They are cheaper but also consume the most electricity. Most of the energy used by an incandescent bulb ends up as heat. Less than 10% of the energy used is emitted as actual light. Standard incandescent bulbs have an efficacy of 5-15 lumens/watt. Not all are created equal: those that use more power typically have greater efficacies than those that use less power. For example: a 5 W incandescent may have an efficacy of 5 lumens/watt while a 100 W incandescent could have an efficacy of 10 lumens/watt. A major manufacturer recently announced they are developing a high-efficient incandescent bulbs up to four more times efficient than today's incandescent and will be comparable to compact fluorescent bulbs.

Halogen

Halogen bulbs are also incandescent. However, standard halogens have slightly higher efficacies ranging from 15-24 lumens.

Linear fluorescent

For residential lighting, fluorescent lights offer the best efficacy ratings – typically 65-100 lumens/watt. They are most popular for commercial use.

Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs)

Compact fluorescent lamps use the same technology as fluorescent lamps – they're just much smaller. CFLs can be screwed into standard light sockets to replace incandescent lamps. Although CFLs are more expensive to buy than incandescent bulbs, they use two thirds less energy and last about eight times longer.

• Replacing a 100-watt incandescent light with a 25 watt CFL will save approximately $30 in electricity over the life of the bulb.

The ENERGY STAR® Symbol

Natural Resources Canada estimates if every household in Canada changed just one traditional incandescent light bulb to an ENERGY STAR labelled CFL, the country would save over $73 million in energy costs every year and reduce GHG emissions by 397,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO ₂) – which would have the same impact on climate change as taking 66,000 cars off the road for one year.

By replacing the light bulbs you use the most with two ENERGY STAR labelled CFLs, you can reduce the annual emissions associated with your lighting needs by 36 kilograms per year.

The ENERGY STAR symbol is the easiest way for consumers to tell which products are more energy efficient. Only products that meet the international ENERGY STAR criteria can have the ENERGY STAR label.