In the coming months the government's “Mission Energy Revolution” will provide four million Venezuelan households with some 52 million energy-saving lightbulbs, made in China and purchased via Cuba. President Hugo Chávez, in the final stretch of the campaign that led to his re-election, initiated the program on Nov. 17, delivering the first neon bulbs, which consume one-fifth the electricity that standard bulbs use, in poor communities on the northeastern island of Margarita.

“Finally they are carrying out an action that we have been proposing since 1991, because this is a country that consumes and wastes gasoline and electricity,” José Moya, president of the Federation of Environmental Organizations, told Tierramérica.

Venezuela, with a capacity to produce 18 megawatts of electricity per hour, generates 92,000 gigawatts monthly, and in the last year saw its electrical consumption rise seven percent.