Residential Lighting in Lithuania

A wider use of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) offers a significant opportunity for Lithuania in reducing wasteful electricity consumption, and making progress towards retiring the Chernobyl-type Ignalina nuclear power reactors. We evaluate the conservation potential of compact fluorescent lamps for managing the residential electrical energy demand in Lithuania. The analysis is undertaken from the three separate perspectives of (1) the national economy, (2) the consumers and (3) the utilities. In our analysis we use the most recent available data on Lithuanian residential lighting. The costs of conserved energy of 15 and 23 W CFLs range from $0.007 to 0.031 per kW h depending on CFL price and assuming 4-hour daily lamp use. Replacing only the two most used 60 W incandescent lamps per household with CFLs would save 190 GW h of electrical energy for Lithuania annually worth 12 million US dollars at the long run marginal cost. We compare the current residential lighting situation in Lithuania with that in Hungary and Poland, where introduction of CFLs has been much more successful. We then discuss factors that could explain the much higher CFL penetration in Hungary and Poland, barriers to immediate large-scale introduction of CFLs in Lithuania, and policy instruments that could be used for promoting the diffusion of CFLs in the residential sector of Lithuania. We conclude that future success of CFL penetration in Lithuania will depend on aggressive information and promotion efforts by at least the CFL manufacturers, and/or by any of the stakeholder institutions (e.g. the state agencies responsible for energy and environment, electric utilities, international agencies, etc.). Given the small size of the Lithuanian market, it would make sense to “team up” with one or more neighboring countries to address the CFL issues.