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Using Financial Incentives to Promote Compact Fluorescent Lamps in Europe Cost Effectiveness and Consumer Response in 10 Countries Evan Mills Department of Environmental and Energy Systems Studies, University of Lund, Sweden Abstract Between late-1987 and mid-1991, many electric utilities in Europe offered financial incentives to promote the use of energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). At least 51 programmes have taken place in 10 countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. These programmes represent the "state-of-the-art" in electric demand-side management in Europe. About 7.2 million households have been eligible for the programmes, acquiring about 2.2 million CFLs. For the seven countries (39 programmes) where data were available, the average societal cost of energy saved in the programmes was 2.1 cents/kWh (22mECU/kWh), including 0.3 cents/kWh for programme administration and marketing. This is very cost-effective from a societal perspective, i.e. approximately one-third the cost of building and operating new electric power plants. Some of the programmes have been available to non-residential customers. Post-program surveys contain a significant amount of useful information on programme impacts, consumer response, and broader market response. Key findings include: the most societally cost-effective programmes resulted when utilities paid a high proportion (or all) of the cost of the efficient lamps consumer penetration rates correlate very weakly with the level of incentives information-only programmes achieved the lowest penetration rates (lamps/eligible household), the form of the incentive is an important determinant of participation, non-economic factors are at least as important as economic factors in determining participation, women and men respond differently to lighting programmes, pensioners and occupants of single-family homes are overrepresented as programme participants in relation to their representation in the total eligible populations, consumer self-reported interest in buying CFLs is highly sensitive to lamp prices, with a strong increase in interest at a price of about $10 to $15 (7 to 10 ECU/lamp), and the use of CFLs is highly coincident with periods of utility peak demand. Differences between the experiences in Europe and the United States are discussed. Back to Right Light Proceedings startpage Top of page