The end of incandescence
“Better late than never, right? Regardless of your feelings on said mantra, the United States of America has finally passed a law barring stores from selling incandescent light bulbs after 2012. ‘Course, the EU and Australia have already decided to ditch the inefficient devices in the not-too-distant future, but a new energy bill signed into law this week throws the US into the aforementioned group. Better grab a pack of the current bulbs while you still can — soon you’ll be holding a sliver of history.” – link
How strange. I don’t entirely know how I feel about this, honestly. I want to know the details. I presume you must still be able to buy the old bulbs for, say, historical context.
Currently, I use white-light incandescent in my entire house. LED light bulbs are still too expensive and they haven’t come up with a good solution for diffusion yet, so I guess it’s compact fluorescent or halogen.
On the bright side…
My hotel uses the CFL bulbs (the better hotels in the chain all do) and of course they get stolen from in-room. Perhaps the theft will go down if we…
1. Charge for it
2. Have CFLs as the STANDARD in this country
Hrm. This definitely makes me uneasy. I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t be able to go out and buy an inefficient item if I so choose. Incandescents are definitely not something so dangerous they need to be banned with blanket legislation. I can see maybe instituting power consumption standards for businesses or something, but geez. This seems just overkill.
Halogens are incandescent too.
I’m interested in reading the bill itself, because there are particular places where only incancesdents can currently be used: inside of ovens, extreme cold temperature areas, places that need really low EMI, etc.
I believe I looked over it the other day in another news article. Ones in refrigerators and ovens are okay, I remember that much.
But the basic idea behind cutting their use is that they waste so much electricity. Cutting their use is one of the easiest ways to lower carbon emissions.
I think I saw some details on this somewhere, but of course now can’t find the link again. Anyway, the gist is that not all traditional bulbs are banned, just ones that don’t meet a certain efficiency standard. So the ultra cheap ones are probably what will disappear.
Right; you’ll still be able to buy high efficiency incandescents, which are in the works, now.
If they could just get the colors on the LEDs right, I’d love to make the switch to them. I had a set of LED rope lights for a few hours (took them back). Wow! the color was just sorta off.
I’ve yet to meet a fluorescent light that doesn’t induce eyestrain and headaches in me; if this law is the real deal, I’ll seriously think of contacting an attorney and suing over it.
The law is real; it’s part of the new energy bill. It would have to be a violation of your Constitutional rights for you to have standing to sue. Off the top of my head, I can’t think what right that would be. You’ll still be able to buy incandescents; they’ll just have to be high efficiency incandescents, which are in the works, now.
No, all I need for standing to sue are real damages. Incessant eyestrain sounds like real damages to me. Plus, there are the 9th and 10th Amendments, both of which tell the Federal gov’t that it’s got no jurisdiction over this matter, only the several states do.
I’ll assume that your comments weren’t legal advice, I’m sure you meant to say that and just forgot.
I heard something once about CFLs having trace amounts of mercury in them. Any knowledge about the truthiness of this?
It is true – they shouldn’t be disposed of in the trash.
Wiki says:
Under the voluntary commitment, effective April 15, 2007, NEMA members will cap the total mercury content in CFLs of less than 25 watts at 5 milligrams (mg) per unit. The total mercury content of CFLs that use 25 to 40 watts of electricity will be capped at 6 mg per unit.[34]
A June 2007 article calculated that the overall mercury emission by compact fluorescent lamps is less than the mercury released into the atmosphere by coal-fired power generation for series of equivalent incandescent lamps over the same period.[35] Of course, not all electricity is coal-fire generated, but the mercury from spent CFLs in landfills is not released into air, and with proper disposal, will not be released into the subsurface or groundwater in the foreseeable future.
….
Some manufacturers such as Philips and GE make very low-mercury content CFLs.[40] In 2007, Philips claimed its Master TL-D Alto range to have the lowest mercury content of any CFL on the market, at 2mg.[41]
Safe disposal requires storing the bulbs unbroken until they can be processed. Consumers should seek advice from local authorities. Usually, one can either:
* Return used CFLs to where they were purchased, so the store can recycle them correctly; or
* Take used CFLs to a local recycling facility.
I’d really take a look at the article, as it has a great chart for comparing mercury in each circumstance.
More from wiki: