April 19, 2007
Danielle Godard, All Headline News Staff Writer
Toronto, ON (AHN) -

The "wasteful" standard lightbulb will be snuffed out officially in Ontario following a provincial initiative announced Wednesday.

The Ontario government has marked the original Edison-designed incandescent bulb as the bane of the environment, and all such bulbs will be banned in the province by 2012.

Compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs will fill the void left by the incandescent light bulb ban, which follows an Australian initiative to ban them by 2010 and a European one to get rid of them by 2009.

General Electric doesn't stand to lose out on the move to more efficient lighting - they are developing an incandescent bulb to be released in 2010 that could potentially be more efficient than CFL bulbs.

Ontario Environment Minister Laurel Brown believes the move will be as beneficial for the environment as "taking 250,000 cars off the road."

Incandescent bulbs use only five per cent of the electricity that moves through it. The remainder of the energy is lost as heat.

Energy Minister Dwight Duncan said there will likely be exceptions to the ban since incandescent technology is vital to certain appliances and medical applications.