California Proposes to Ban Incandescent Lightbulbs

zhang1983 writes to tell us CNN is reporting that California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine wants to make his state the first to ban incandescent lightbulbs with the "How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act". The act will promote Compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) to replace the inefficient incandescent lightbulbs. According to him, "Incandescent lightbulbs were first developed almost 125 years ago, and since that time they have undergone no major modifications, meanwhile, they remain incredibly inefficient, converting only about 5 percent of the energy they receive into light."

Comments

Kind of radical, but I hope it works

[CastrTroy]

As extreme as this legislation is, I hope it goes through, as long as there are provisions so that incandescents can still be used under certain circumstances. But as for everyday home lighting, the incandescent should be abolished.

Re:Kind of radical, but I hope it works

[simm1701]

Ok for a state like california I can understand the reasons for this.

Its hot there and you probably dont need an extra heat source.

However the idea that incandescants are "bad" is really quite foolish.

They take less energy to produce, are cheaper to produce and easier to dispose of (no heavy metals or polutants)

The down side? atleast 80% of the energy they use goes to heat. Is this really a down side? Many people call this waste heat - but it certainly is not waste if it is doing something useful - like heating your house! I live in england - this means my central heating (electric) is on most of the year - it rarely gets warm enough for it not to be in use.

Also given our latitude in the breif summer that we have it is also lighter much longer into the evening.

This generally means that when the lights are on, the heating is also on. The heating is controlled by a thermostat - so until the room is at a certain temerature, the heaters will be on. If some of that heat is being provided by incandescant bulbs then it just means the heating comes on less.

So that means all the energy is now useful... So given efficiency is useful work out / work in then for the above usage (which is common) incandescant bulbs provide 100% efficiency. Given the cost to produce and the polutants in the so called high efficiency bulbs is it really a good idea to switch?

Re:Kind of radical, but I hope it works

[Clover_Kicker]

Heating the ceiling with a light bulb is a terrible way to warm a room. There's a reason they place dedicated heaters close to the floor on outside walls.

Re:Kind of radical, but I hope it works

[UbuntuDupe]

What's that, Marxist? You're saying that a selfish, human concern like that can possibly override the goal of SAVING THE EARTH? No, it can't be!

Re:Kind of radical, but I hope it works

[Hijacked Public]

There are a couple of ways of running an LED from an AC power source. Some types can run directly from AC, and you are correct in thinking that they are lit only half the time. This typically happens faster than can be preceived by the human eye, but it screws up us photographers.

Some newer AC LEDs meant as replacements for incandescents come bundled with an AC to DC inverter. Various people are selling inverters combined with higher power LEDs, like the Cree or Luxeon 5 watt emitters, packaged into an incadescent sized space.

LEDs aren't quite there yet when it comes to indoor lighting. They make great flashlights, unless you want to see a long way off, but they tend to suck for general interior lighting.

I don't like this

[Eugenia Loli]

I don't like this at all. My eyes hurt with fluorescent bulbs. They give me a headache. I prefer the more natural look and less-flickering of the current bulbs. Unless they fix the fluorescent bulbs to not be so intrusive, I don't like this.

Re:I don't like this

[CastrTroy]

Or you could just tell him which type of CFLs you find the best, so he doesn't have to do the same experimentation that you did.

No, no...

[Eternauta3k]

While it's great they want to promote CFLs, I think this is excessive. What if you want to light an art room or something? Maybe there are exceptions for cases like those, but wouldn't it be better if they created incentives to use CFLs or maybe tax incandescents?

Right idea, wrong method

[mcostas]

Specific technology mandates or bans are a bad idea. However, rules requiring a certain efficiency of lighting would make sense. This could effectively ban incandescents and lead to replacement with CFL, but without getting unnecessarily stuck on a particular technology. For example, LED bulbs will probably soon be better than CFL. And of course we must believe in the American corporate ability to manufacture some sort of Hummer of CF bulbs that still manages to use 1 megawatt per room, while complying with a technology mandate.

Re:Wrong target

[Umbrel]

You do realize that given the amount of light bulbs over there, swiching to CFL is actually a huge energy saving

Re:Somewhat pointless...

[anagama]

Using lights as heaters is silly. Heat rises. Most lights are at least halfway up the wall -- floor level lights are very rare. Besides, were talking CA here, and while significant parts of the state have 4 seasons, a lot of the population is located from LA to San Diego where cooling is more of an issue than heating. Seriously, would someone in Maine leave their refrigerator door open all day to cool the house in winter (not that it would work because the cooling elements release heat back into the house -- but play along here)? Why would someone in a hot clime intentionally use lights to heat their house in the summer?

Re:Wrong target

[mark-t]

Three words:

Bright white LED's.

Re:Wrong target

[mordors9]

But we have empowered these idiots with our votes in the past. They passed smoking bans and we all applauded. They told us we had to buckle up and wear helmets and we gave them a pat on the back. Lately they have been trying to protect us by banning the very same tranfats that they forced upon restaurants several years ago to get rid to saturated fats. So why shouldn't they further save the world by banning the light bulb. Next stop... who knows.

Re:Wrong target

[rbanffy]

Run a public information campaign instead.

Raise the taxes on incandescent, reducing taxes on LED and CFLs.

Re:how many? it's simple, really.

[minion]

I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

Better idea

[MobyDisk]

A better idea would be to tax them. An even better idea would be to increase the energy tax. That way you force people to make more energy-efficient decisions about all products, not just one particular type of light bulb. This is a case where economics can work for you, not against you. Bans like this also get complicated: What about cases where incandecent is the only option? What if someone makes a hybrid bulb? What if someone makes a more efficient incandecent? It all comes back to legislating technology (light bulbs), instead of legislating the real problem (energy use).

Re:Kind of shortsighted

[Rob the Bold]

Unfortunately, most CFLs contain mercury so disposal becomes an issue.

Depending on what they burn in your area to generate electricity, the mercury in the extra fuel needed to produce the extra juice needed to run an incandescent over a fluorescent's lifetime could exceed the mercury in a CFL.

Take street lights for example, they use Metal halide or sodium bulbs which are in some cases considerably more efficient than fluorescents.

Since those are gas-discharge lamps like fluorescents, I don't think you would ban them when outlawing incandescents.

I've replaced most of my bulbs with CFLs now, but finding a good replacement for a 40 watt incandescent chandelier type bulb is damn near impossible.

If you ever find anything, please let me know. I've tried the existing options, and they are very disappointing.

Perhaps mandating a public service notice stuffed in (or printed on) each electric bill would be a better choice than an outright ban.

The dark side of knee-jerk do-gooder-ism

[swb]

Of course not, no more than the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has conisders the outcome of increased overpopulation and the ensuing political, social and environmental chaos that will be caused by curing endemic diseaes in third world countries.

This is what ALWAYS happens when someone seizes upon a single good idea and then decides to make it manditory; CFLs save tons of energy, but they contain mercury. The intelligent people who use them know this and dispose of properly; the masses won't, so the "solution" they eliminates mercury emissions from power plants ends up INCREASING mercury in the environment from millions of illegally disposed of CFLs.

In true California fashion, they will probably institute manditory $10 deposits on CFLs as well as creating a massive new lightbulb disposal infrastructure which will use more resources, produce more CO2 and cost billions more than just keeping incandescents.

OT: Smoking Bans

[Pfhorrest]

But we have empowered these idiots with our votes in the past. They passed smoking bans and we all applauded. They told us we had to buckle up and wear helmets and we gave them a pat on the back. Lately they have been trying to protect us by banning the very same tranfats that they forced upon restaurants several years ago to get rid to saturated fats. So why shouldn't they further save the world by banning the light bulb. Next stop... who knows.

This is just a pet peeve of mine, but I get sick of seeing smoking bans rolled in with a bunch of nanny laws which only protect you from yourself and your own stupidity.

SMOKING AFFECTS OTHER PEOPLE. There's this little thing called second-hand smoke. I seem to recall it being actually worse than first-hand smoke, since the first-hand smoker at least has a filter.

I'm all for repealing drug laws and such in general - it's none of anybody else's business what you put in your body. But what you put in our, collective air is our, collective business, and as such it is the legitimate domain of state regulation.

And back on topic again... yeah, banning incandescent light bulbs is stupid.

Re:OT: Smoking Bans

[cayenne8]

"I get sick of seeing smoking bans rolled in with a bunch of nanny laws which only protect you from yourself...SMOKING AFFECTS OTHER PEOPLE."

This is true, and that's why for years, they had bans for smoking in PUBLIC places where smoke would affect a person that had to go there...like a govt. building, DMV..etc. It is not fair to have smoke trapped in a place a person has to go that does not smoke...I agree with you.

However, recent smoking bans have gone too far. Private establishments now, believe it or not, even in New Orleans (last bastion of sin and freewill), will not allow you to smoke in private establishments if serving food is their primary form of business....places that are primarily restaurants.

I say this is WRONG. If a proprietor wants to allow smoking in his place, then those that prefer not to smoke...can either deal with it, or take their hard earned dollars elsewhere.

There were restaurants around before this bad that had no smoking allowed. I've had dates that smoked, and felt they didn't want to go there since they couldn't light up...so, it works both ways.

Now that the ban is in effect....choice that was there before, has been taken away. The nanny state has won another battle.

I argue that this IS like other situations you mentioned where this does affect the individual...before the ban, an individual could decide whether to work at or be a patron at and establishment that allowed smoking on premise...now, that personal choice is taken away.

For reference, I'm a recently reformed smoker myself...and not having any smokers around IS easier for me...but, I'd rather have others have the choice than my having less temptation.

You can still smoke in bars and casinos, and the street down here....but, how much longer till they try to regulate that? Smoking is still a legal activity...if they want to ban smoking, then try to make cigarettes illegal? Why not protect everyone? See? That just doesn't make sense either....at least not to me.

I say that state really shouldn't be the business of protecting people from themselves.....

Re:OT: Smoking Bans

[cayenne8]

"A restaurant isn't exactly a "private" establishment."

I believe it is....remember seeing the signs (not as often displayed these days) saying they reserved the right to refuse to serve anyone..? No shoes, no shirt, no service?

It is publically accesible...but, it is a private place of business.

When there is no ban...EVERYONE has a choice of whether to go there as a patron, or an employee. No one holds a gun to anyone's head forcing them in the door to stay.

With smoking bans....there is no choice.

And in the US at least, freedom to choose is supposed to be one of the highest tennets (sp?).

Re:OT: Smoking Bans

[Pfhorrest]

This is just a blanket reply to most of the other replies here... I'd rather not respond to all these messages individually.

My complaints about smoke are mostly in public places. Particularly, I would like to see smoking banned in the usual sense of "in public", as in, out on the street. I'm sick of walking through clouds of other people's smoke just by walking through a crowded public place (a busy street, a university campus, etc). Smoking on the street is just like urinating on the sidewalk; no, it's not going to kill you, but it's mildly unhealthy and rather disgusting and people shouldn't be allowed to pollute our public spaces like that.

As to smoking in private establishments, I think the urine example segues there nicely to a quote I saw here on Slashdot somewhere. It was something like "Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a pool." Would you (presuming "you" are generally opposed to state intervention) be OK with someone operating a privately-owned but open-to-the-public swimming pool in which people were freely allowed to urinate, even so far as having a "peeing section" so as to minimize offense to the non-pissers? I imagine most of you would say "no", and I know the health department sure would. The same sort of reasoning seems applicable to smoking in public restaurants. I guess I'm theoretically OK with a "smoking establishment", i.e. a place where people go primarily to smoke, inasmuch as I'd be OK with a golden-shower-fetish porn studio or brothel (that is to say, I think both are gross, but if everyone there is OK with it, and it's not spilling out into public, go right ahead).

Continuing the analogy further, I'd say the same line of reasoning applies to smoking in the home too, if you have children or other such dependents. If you own your own home and you want to piss on the carpet in the living room, then you do that, have fun. But if you've got kids, who are dependent on you and stuck in that environment - or say, if you rent a room in your house to someone - then I think most people would agree that creating that sort of unhealthy squalor is grounds for having your kids taken out of that environment, or grounds for your tenants to file legal complaints against you. Same thing for smoking.

Now I know a bunch of smokers are going to say, "but that leaves practically nowhere left to smoke!" Tough. Smoking is not something you biologically need to do, and it's not a right (in the sense of a claim right; it's within your right to liberty rights to smoke, provided you're not doing anything else wrong by it). Have "smoke rooms" like bathrooms, with ventilation systems like a bathroom's plumbing (bars might be good candidates for conversion into places like this); or smoke when you're out in the middle of nowhere and nobody is going to be offended by it, like pissing behind a bush in the country. Yeah, I know these rules would make it hard for you to find a place to smoke with the way things are set up now. But that's not the intention (I honestly don't care what you do with your own body), it's just a side-effect of keeping you from polluting other peoples' air space. If that makes it a little harder for you to support your addiction, tough shit, if you'll pardon my french.

Also, as a sidenote: the bit about second hand smoke being worse than first hand smoke is just something I recall hearing. Whether or not it's true is not relevant to my point.

And, once again back on topic... if the government wants to regulate energy usage, it should do so by REGULATING ENERGY USAGE. Rather, it should impose fines for causing the negative side-effects of producing energy, which would raise the price of energy, and reduce it's usage. But banning a class of products is the wrong way to go about it. I'm not advocating a tobacco tax or a ban on cigarettes - just making it illegal to smoke in certain circumstances, like it's illegal to piss in some circumstances. Outright banning of products is usually a bass-ackwards way to go about achieving your real goals.

Re:Is Coercion Justified?

[lxt518052]

CFLs so clearly out perform incandescents that their eventual triumph in the free market is assured.

It's necessary to accelerate replacing incandscents with CFLs, because a lot of people either don't care, or simply don't get it. How many offices are left lit all night? How many SUVs do Americans drive? If only people had made more sensible choice, such regulations would never been thought off.

Moreover, the coercive policy will almost certainly fail in its goal of reducing CO2 emissions. Since it takes more energy to construct CFLs, forcing their adoption will generate more CO2 emissions in the short run. Sounds plausible but let's do some simple calculation first. A CFL normally consumes 1/5 to 1/3 power of an equivalent incandescent bulb. Suppose a 60W incandescent bulb has a life span of 2000 hours and the CFL replacing it works twice longer (conservative figures, just for the purpose of illustration). The energy saved would be:
4000 hours * 60W * (1- 0.25) - energy_needed_in_making_one_CFL + 2 * energy_needed_in_making_one_incandescent
The first term comes to 180KW. Even if making one CFL need more energy than making two incandescent, which I highly doubt, the overall result is not likely to be negative or even a small positive. In other words, energy saving by using CFL is a considerably big NET GAIN.

Parent post on /. and the fact it being moderated as interesting actually makes a great example for my first argument - some people either don't care or just don't get it, even in the presence of mounting evidence. It's a really sad thing.

Breathtaking hypocricy

[steve_bryan]

Wow, a state full of people driving what amounts to Sherman tanks is now sanctimoniously telling people what type of lightbulb they can legally use? Will there be teams of lightbulb inspectors descending on homes in their black SUVs to insure compliance by the peasants?

Here are a few free suggestions. If you strongly feel that CFL should be used instead of incandescant then buy them for your own damn home amd business. If you think it would be a useful application of public funds then propose that the state purchase and distribute CFL's for free or a much reduced price. But don't use the police power of the state to enforce your own fashionable whim of the moment. If this proposal does succeed then good luck dealing with the mercury poisoning.