The heating of heavy plasma components by elastic collisions with electrons is one of the main mechanisms of energy transfer to ions and neutrals at low and medium power input, but often regarded inevitable. It is measured by optical emission spectroscopy, employing rovibrational bands of nitrogen, which is doped to capacitively coupled discharges of hydrogen and chlorine, and for comparison, also argon.@footnote 1,2@ The temperatures in chlorine are comparable to the inert gas argon, whereas hydrogen is significantly cooler, but all three will saturate at higher power inputs (more than 1/4 W/cm@super 2@ absorbed power density or at dc bias values higher than about 600 V). It is this region where parasitic processes (the most prominent is power absorption by ions in the sheath) will begin reducing the phase angle of power input from nearly perfect -90° to values of less than -20°. These data is discussed in terms of the functional dependence of electron density and electron temperature on discharge pressure and power input which have been recorded earlier.@footnote 3,4@ @FootnoteText@ @footnote 1@ M. J. Schabel, V.M. Donnelly, A. Kornblit, and W.W. Tai. Determination of Electron Temperature, Atomic Fluorine Concentration, and Gas Temperature in Inductively Fluorocarbon/Rare Gas Plasmas Using Optical Emission Spectroscopy, JVST A 20, 555 (2002)@footnote 2@ B. Bai and H.H. Sawin: Neutral Gas Temperature Measurements within Transformer Coupled Toroidal Argon Plasmas; JVST A 22, 2014 (2004)@footnote 3@ G. Franz: Comprehensive Analysis of Capacitively Coupled Chlorine-Containing Discharges, to be published in JVST A, May/June 2005@footnote 4@ G. Franz, M. Klick: Electron Heating in Capacitively Coupled Discharges and Reactive Gases, to be published in JVST A, 2005.