PARIS: On Oct. 12, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California signed a bill requiring state regulators to set energy consumption standards for light bulbs by the end of next year. Once applied, their goal will be to cut energy use by 50 percent for household bulbs and 25 percent for other bulbs within 10 years.”

The California bill followed a move backed by European Union leaders in March to phase out the domestic use of common incandescent light bulbs in the EU within two years, and a similar Australian plan announced in February requiring a switch to low-energy, longer-lasting compact fluorescent bulbs.

“While they may be more expensive to buy up front, they can pay for themselves within a year,” said the Australian environment minister, Malcolm Turnbull.

Governments around the world that used to promote energy conservation are shifting their focus toward energy efficiency as a way to curb global warming without constraining economic growth, according to energy and environmental officials.

The change is occurring in parts of the industrial world where energy use has been greatest, notably the United States and the European Union. It coincides with the increasing availability of fuel and power from renewable sources and the spread of technology that allows traditional fuels like coal to be burned more cleanly.

“Conservation got a bad name under Ronald Reagan when he said that conservation means being cold in the winter and warm in the summer,” said Joel Gordes, an energy consultant in Connecticut who is also the technical coordinator for the states Energy Conservation Management Board.

The connotation of deprivation made it easier for the public to embrace energy efficiency instead, he said.

“Energy efficiency is one of the very best ways you can mitigate climate change,” he added. “With efficiency you are getting exactly the same amount of air conditioning or lighting, but youre doing it with new technology” and using less energy.

The EU has also shed the concept of conservation in favor of efficiency. Conservation is “not really a term we use,” said an official who deals with energy issues at the European Commission and who asked not to be identified by name because she was not authorized to state policy. “Our real aim is to use energy more efficiently, and to use renewables more.”

Barbara Helfferich, the commissions environmental spokeswoman offered the same message. “We are stressing that we can greatly improve energy efficiency,” Helfferich said. “We still have a long way to go with efficiency, but we are doing better than regions around us and the United States.”

The policy shifts quietly began more than a decade ago, to escape “the moralistic, anti-consumption tone” of earlier conservation campaigns, according to Mithra Moezzi, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Energys Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“Energy conservation focuses on how much energy is consumed. Energy efficiency focuses on how much energy is used relative to the services demanded,” Moezzi said in a 1998 report. “Energy efficiency may result in energy conservation, but it may also serve as permission to consume.”

That remained the underlying framework for U.S. policy, an energy specialist at the laboratory said last month.

While President George W. Bush, in an apparent turnaround in policy, had conceded a scientific link between global warming and emissions from fossil fuel use, he and other top administration officials maintained at climate change meetings last month their rejection of internationally agreed emission caps, in favor of moves to promote fuel efficiency.

“Theres nothing wrong with conservation, but if youre trying to meet demand from conservation alone it doesnt work very well,” said an energy analyst at the National Center for Policy Analysis, in Dallas, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the center. “In the end, some of your growth in demand can be met through conservation, but probably not a majority of it.

“Economics is the art of trade-offs, and as one resource becomes scarce you either figure out a way of producing more of that resource or you switch to other resources.”

Among alternative resources, renewable energies have a role to play, but no alternatives can replace efficiency as the top priority, said Ian Manders, deputy director of the Association for the Conservation of Energy, a British industry-supported lobbying group.

“Energy efficiency is not generally considered as sexy as renewable energy, but its the first thing you do,” Manders said. “We have got to get used to using energy more efficiently. An industrial society lives on cheap energy, and when cheap energy goes, well have to use the energy we gain from renewable sources far more efficiently than we do by burning oil and gas.”

BEACH art organisers have vowed to rebuild on Portobello’s sands, despite their giant pyramids being wrecked within six weeks.

The residents behind the Big Things on the Beach trust, which commissioned the sand pyramids, said they would return next year to create a similar work of public art.

Scores of community volunteers helped fill sandbags to build the 13ft-high sculptures.

They were intended to stay on the seafront until November, but one has now been completely destroyed and two have been pulled down to half their original height.

The first of them was attacked by vandals before they were officially unveiled last month. Temporary safety fences were put up at the time to protect them until the official opening.

Today, Caroline Muirhead, public arts development worker for Big Things on the Beach, said the trust had decided not to rebuild the pyramids after the latest damage, which she said had been “a big disappointment”.

But she said the project had been an overwhelming success and the organisers were determined to repeat it next year.

“Two are only half as high as they were. We don’t know whether it’s vandals that have done it vindictively, or if it’s just kids who have been playing on them, but its still a big disappointment,” she said.

“The original plan was to have them up until the end of the year, but that just isn’t going to happen now.

“We’ve taken one of them away completely and the other two are just going to be left until they degrade naturally. There are no plans to rebuild them.

“It looks a bit of a mess now and we’re obviously disappointed, but the pyramids were still a big success. We had a lot of people involved with building them and they have been very popular during the time they have been on the beach.

“This isn’t going to stop us from putting on something similar on the beach next year, which we hope will be embraced just as warmly by the local community.”

Robert Gatliff, chairman of Portobello community council, added: “It is a shame that the pyramids have been attacked, because they were very popular and a talking point in Portobello.

“It seems to have happened thanks to a combination of people attacking them maliciously and young children playing on them. It’s difficult to tell which has caused the most damage.

“Obviously with public art, you want people to join in and help with building and maintaining the sculptures. I suppose sandbags are just very easy to throw about, so maybe there should have been more notices or fences put in place to protect them.

“Whatever the case, they have been really appreciated and a great success. I look forward to seeing something similar on the beach next year.”

The sandbags were sculpted into pyramids by celebrated Scottish artist Hill Jephson Robb. A total of 15,000 bags were used in the project to represent every home in Portobello, with local residents invited to fill a bag each.

Sandbags were used so that waves and the rain would not wash the pyramids away, and it was originally intended that they would be recycled when the installation was taken down in November.

UBS, Europe’s largest bank, today warned investors it could face further write-downs of assets because of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, as it announced a third-quarter pre-tax loss of Sfr726m (300m).

The loss came within the Sfr600-800m range indicated by chief executive Marcel Rohner on October 1 but was bigger than the market expected. UBS said it expected the group to return to profitability in the last quarter of what has been a turbulent year.

The Swiss bank, which took charges of Sfr4.2bn on sub-prime-related losses in fixed income investments in the third quarter, said its investment bank was likely to make further losses in the final quarter.

It said it was exposed to further deterioration in the US housing and mortgage-related markets as well as rating downgrades for mortgage-related securities “which could lead to further write-downs on the positions”.

Mr Rohner, the first of Europe’s Big Three banking chiefs to report this week on the impact of the credit crunch, said the result was “unquestionably disappointing” but insisted the bank was dealing with the problems through management changes and sharper risk assessment.

Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse report their third-quarter results tomorrow and Thursday respectively.