[PLUG-TALK] The Keith Effect - Lightbulb factories closing

[Don J.]

Hidden energy costs are indeed everywhere and calculating them is
extremely complicated, and better left to those who actually have the
knowledge of supply-chain economics to tease out reliable numbers on
this.

Despite my limited knowledge of economics, these factors at least
should be considered:
1) Whether we care about carbon emissions or consumer prices
2) Energy savings in plant consolidation
3) Possible difference in energy required for transport (if the plant
is in, say, Tijuana, it might be cheaper to truck the bulbs along the
west coast than over the rockies)
4) Possibility that the generators supplying the electricity to make
the bulbs in Mexico might not be as clean as generators in use in
Ohio. And of course the difference in energy required to make CFL vs.
incandescent.
5) etc. etc.

This is one case where if it could be determined that overseas
production is far worse for the US market (worse judged by, let's
imagine, environmental guidelines), appropriate tariffs might be a
decent idea...if we could get away with using them! Just how some
report showed that it's better for the environment to drive an
early-90s beater than cause the production of a new hybrid.

Don

On 10/5/07, Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Oct 2007, Don J. wrote:
>
> > Either way the watt savings is enormous.
>
>    Just out of curiosity, how much additional energy is required to transport
> the bulbs from Mexico or Hungary compared to Ohio?
>
>    I'm not taking the side of either GE or the unions. There are hidden
> energy costs in everything. In the early 1970s there was a guest speaker at
> the U. of Illinois talking about the energy savings of coal gasification.
> They were running a pilot project at GE in New York and he was enthused
> about the results. Then someone in the audience asked how much energy it
> took to gasify the coal, and what the _net_ energy was of the process. No
> answer.
>
> Rich
>
> --
> Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.               |    The Environmental Permitting
> Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.        |         Accelerators(TM)
> <http://www.appl-ecosys.com>     Voice: 503-667-4517      Fax: 503-667-8863
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