energy efficiency

It's been a while since we heard from Woolworths about their policy on light bulbs, so we thought we'd deliver a little something to let them know we haven't forgotten about them.

So far in our light bulb campaign, we've bashed companies like Woolworths for not being proactive enough in sweeping inefficient incandescent bulbs from their shelves, but we're also working on more positive angles to demonstrate the plus-points of energy saving light bulbs or compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). One of the frequent excuses used for not switching to CFLs is that they're unattractive/ungainly/ugly/inconvenient (delete as applicable), but that's not so. They now come in an exhaustive variety of shapes, sizes and colours and can be just as aesthetically pleasing as old-fashioned bulbs.

Jason Bruges certainly thinks so. One of the UK's top interactive installation designers, he’s currently working with us on a new work to demonstrate the versatility of CFLs. He's no stranger to low-carbon design projects - his recent installation at the South Bank in London, Wind to Light, featured mini-wind turbines powering hundreds of LEDs, and his studio's latest work will be the front of house feature at this year's 100% Design at Earls Court Exhibition Centre later this month.

Bad energy: inefficient centralised energy generation is a major contributor to global warming

Over the next decade, Britain needs to invest tens of billions on renewing its dilapidated energy infrastructure. Many of our current nuclear, coal and gas power stations will close, and the electricity transmission and distribution grids themselves will need replacement.

Which provides us with a once-in-a-generation chance for the government to redesign our energy market. We have the perfect opportunity to go for maximum environmental efficiency, whilst ensuring energy security and reliability of supply.

We can shout from the rooftops that nuclear power won't stop climate change and decentralised energy is the way forward; we can produce investigations into what it is, how it can apply to the UK and how much it will all cost; we can write case studies about how it's already being used; we can lobby government to sort out the regulatory framework and the energy markets so that decentralised energy is on a level footing with other forms of energy production; we can ask you to write to your MP to help spread the word.

A bulb a day keeps climate change at bay (or something along those lines...)

We've had a lot of support for our current light bulbs campaign (and some detractors too, it has to be said) but there have been many queries about whether compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) really are what they're cracked up to be - what about the mercury, can they be recycled, that sort of thing. Many of them have already been covered elsewhere on the site, but it's worth following them up in a slightly more prominent position.

If you have any more queries, just post a comment below or contact us at info@uk.greenpeace.org.

We're beginning to see the first positive results from the light bulb retailers league table we published nearly two weeks ago. Both ASDA and Morrisons have just announced they will improve their game plan and phase out those power-crazy incandescents by the end of 2010, which moves them a couple of places up the league table, leapfrogging several other retailers.

I've been meaning to write about these videos for some time but somehow it never seemed the right moment (and all our Woolworths work kept getting in the way), so apologies if you've already seen them elsewhere. Yet in the lull after the hard launch of our light bulbs campaign, it's worth pointing out that it's not just in the UK that a shift to energy-efficient bulbs is being sought.