Greenpeace launches 'million-petitions' drive to ban bulbs

Chennai, Apr 18 (UNI) Leading environment body 'Greenpeace' today launched a petition signing drive aimed at collecting one million signatures to be subitted to the Centre to implement a ban on inefficient light bulbs across the country by 2010.

''Our talks with some of the state and Central ministers were quite favourable and our initative to ban the bulb got a lot of support'', Greenpeace spokesperson Sanjeev Gopal told newspersons here.

''With this signature campaign we want to empower people to call on their government to implement the ban on filament bulbs, which consumes more electricity than Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFL)'', he added.

''As per statistics, the total electricity generating capacity for Tamil Nadu currently stands at 10,098 MW with annual demand of eight per cent'', he pointed out, adding though the state does not have a shortage of electricity, the increase in the consumption pattern could be met through energy efficienct measures rather than building additional power plants''.

''If all the households in the state would shift from Incadescent to CFL bulbs, there would be an approximate saving of 43 million KW hours per day'', the official claimed.

According to the statistics given by the Greenpeace officials, saving of 43 million KW hours per day, would save 36,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per day.

The officials also maintained that the easiest way to tackle both climate change as well as conserving electricity was to ban the bulb.

UNI