Get Em While They Last: 99-Cent Flourescent Lightbulbs

Grab this offer if you live anywhere in the Pacific Gas & Electric forcefield. PG&E is giving away 1 million energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs this month. They bought them for $1.25 a pop, less than retail, and are working with Safeway to sell them for 99 cents each in their service area (northern and central California). CFLs cost more than standard incandescent lightbulbs but use about 75 percent less energy and last as much as 10 times longer. Each CFL could save $30 in energy costs over the bulb's lifetime. The giveaway might save 400,000 megawatt hours of power use and prevent 200,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions—the equivalent of powering 60,000 homes or taking 31,000 cars off the road for a year.

Okay, the gauntlet's been thrown. How about the other utilities? Maybe their customers should lean on them.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, "The Fragile Edge," and other writings, here.

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