Working with the states and territories, through the Ministerial Council on Energy, the Australian Government is gradually phasing out all inefficient incandescent light globes.

The traditional pear-shaped incandescent light globe will be phased-out first, followed by other incandescent lights (including the least efficient of halogen down lights) in a planned approach as effective and efficient alternatives become available.

The first stage of the phase-out was the introduction of an import restriction on traditional pear-shaped incandescent light globes used for common lighting purposes from 1 February 2009. These globes are the least efficient wasting approximately 90 per cent of the energy they use, mainly as heat.

More information about the import restriction is available at Australian Customs Notice No. 2009/04 – Import controls of General Lighting Service electric filament lamps.

The import restriction will be followed by a sales ban which is expected to be in place by November 2009. Once the sales ban is in place, we will no longer be able to purchase traditional pear-shaped incandescent light globes.

An efficient lighting alternative is the compact fluorescent lamp (CFL), which uses around one fifth of the electricity needed to produce the same light and can last up to 10 times longer than a traditional pear-shaped incandescent light globe.

The phase-out will deliver considerable savings to the environment and the economy. Across the country, the move to more efficient lighting, such as CFLs, is expected to save around 30 terawatt hours of electricity and 28 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions between 2008 and 2020. This is equivalent to permanently decommissioning a small coal-fired power station or taking more than 500,000 cars off the road permanently. It is expected to result in savings to the Australian economy of around $380 million per year by 2020 and result in net savings of more than $50 per year for each household that changes all of its incandescent light globes to CFLs.

On Tuesday 24 March 2009, Federal Minister for the Environment, Peter Garrett, launched a range of ‘Change the Globe’ information designed to help consumers choose more efficient lighting, while visiting Beacon Lighting’s Belrose store, the first retail outlet to display the new information. More details are at Change the Globe media release.

For more information about what the Government is doing to improve the efficiency of lighting go to Phase-out of inefficient incandescent light globes.