From the New York Times today comes the news that Wal-Mart will put it’s merchandising muscle behind energy efficient light bulbs known as compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). These lights cost 8 times as much as traditional bulbs, but save consumers $30 over the life of the bulb.

The article relates a trip made to the Mt. Washington Observatory in New Hampshire by H. Lee Scott, Wal-Mart’s CEO. At the summit, Scott apparently discussed global warming with Steve Hamburg, an environmental studies professor at Brown and Fred Krupp, the president of Environmental Defense and asked the two what Wal-Mart could do to combat global warming. Hamburg made a convincing case for CFLs. This story seems, if not apocryphal, at least planned for later media consumption.

Two things seem clear about Wal-Mart’s push of CFLs - Firstly, Wal-Mart wants to create a “good citizen” image for itself, and secondly, these bulbs would not receive the attention they are if Wal-Mart could not claim they will save consumers money. Given the media’s portrayal of Wal-Mart, shoring up its image has to be a priority and showing environmental concern is always a handy arrow in the PR quiver. “Green” products, however, don’t become successful in the mass market based on “greenness” alone - they need to have other benefits. In the case of CFLs, that benefit is total cost of ownership. As the article points out, selling a higher cost product to consumers based on the notion that total cost of ownership is cheaper, has always been an uphill battle. Add to that hill the fact that CFLs have some offsetting disadvantages (turn-on delay, mercury, and an odd shape) and this will be an initiative worth watching.

We may have finally reached the point where consumers, while not willing to pay a premium for green products, are willing to invest some time to understand how they can save money (and conserve energy) by paying more up front. If Wal-Mart is successful with CFLs, however, we still won’t know if that is good news for green products or for more complex value propositions.

As an aside, Wal-Mart is trying to turn “its sales campaign into a broader cultural movement.” (This is the image burnishing part.) One idea it is entertaining “is to create a Web site that would track sales of compact fluorescent bulbs at major retailers like Walgreen’s and Target. The result would be a real-time map, with data collected by a third party, showing how much Americans have saved by using the energy-efficient bulbs.” I can’t imagine why I would ever look at such a Web site.