Encouraging Adoption of Compact Fluorescents

from various sources including Wikipedia

Improving the efficiency of household lighting is part of the effort to fight global warming and reduce the use of imported fossil fuels. However, many people have been hesitant to transition from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), and many consumers are reluctant to buy compact fluorescent bulbs despite their three- to twelve-month payback period. This may be due to anecdotal information about poor performance of early CFLs. Professionals who install lighting fixtures sometimes do not consider installing compact fluorescents because the electrical bill is insignificant, CFLs have a higher initial cost, they do not work with standard dimmers, and many fixtures are not designed for the added length of CFLs. Retail stores realize that their revenue from repeat light-bulb sales will drop if and when customers switch to compact florescents lights.
 
Some governments have attempted to encourage CFL usage by distributing them for free and by appealing to people's desire to save money and be "green." Some activists in Britain have lobbied Parliament to tax or ban incandescent bulbs, a measure that has generated controversy, and websites like Banthebulb.org have been created in support of the ban.
 
In June 2006, the U.S. Environmental Defense Fund initiated a campaign called Make the Switch to encourage the public to switch from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs. It asked every household in the U.S. to replace three 60-watt incandescent bulbs with CFLs. Environmental Defense claims that if every household were to do this, the change could reduce pollution as much as taking 3.5 million cars off the road would.
 
In addition, Wal-Mart announced in September 2006 that it was starting a campaign to endorse CFLs. The store aims to sell one CFL to everyone of their 100 million customers within the next year, thus changing the energy consumption of the United States and improving Wal-Mart's reputation. In Ottawa, Canada, there is an effort to get every household to change at least one light bulb. Project Porchlight has volunteers going door-to-door providing one CF bulb to every household for free.
 
Another website, Onebillionbulbs.com, is behind a campaign to replace one billion incandescent bulbs with CFLs across the U.S. The site has a fifty-state map; each state is a certain color from white to green. The closer to green, the closer to the state's goal.