GE Closes Last US Light Bulb Factory

pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the US is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s. What made the plant vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014 but rather than setting off a boom in the US manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas. GE developed a plan to see what it would take to retrofit a plant that makes traditional incandescents into one that makes CFLs but even with a $40 million investment the new plant's CFLs would have cost about 50 percent more than those from China. 'Everybody's jumping on the green bandwagon,' says Pat Doyle, 54, who has worked at the plant for 26 years. But 'we've been sold out. First sold out by the government. Then sold out by GE.'"

Comments

The easy way out

[w00tsauce]

GE needs to team up with Cree and retrofit their factory for making the next generation LED bulbs.

Re:The easy way out

[arisvega]

It's not all about illumination- there is many a occasion where the heat produced by the incandescent bulb is desired; keeping food warm, keeping your pet reptile happy, to name a few.

I am definately for sanity in resource management, but I can't fathom this banning obsession-

Re:Why didn't they push LEDs instead of CFL ?

[nickersonm]

I've not needed to replace a single CFL since I changed out all the lightbulbs with them when moving in to my current apartment 4 years ago. Perhaps your power supply is dirty? I hear bad things about CFLs, but the cheap ones I purchased were the best lighting investment I've ever made.

Re:Why didn't they push LEDs instead of CFL ?

[mysidia]

If they were dangerous, the government would never allow them to be sold to households for such common use, since lightbulbs are used in food handling areas.

We pick up and vacuum up the pieces of broken CFLs without hazmat suits all the time, and no ill effects to report... They get broken about 10% of the time when a bulb is being changed, a bit more often than incandescents, which adds to the cost and annoyance of using these bulbs -- the CFLs seem to be more fragile for some reason and break too easily, not sure why that might be.

huh

[buddyglass]

What I don't get is this: if China can produce CFLs at half the price (which doesn't surprise me), then why couldn't they also produce incandescents at half the price? In other words, why hadn't the plant closed long before the advent of CFLs?

Re:Sold out by GE?

[Eharley]

Seriously.

I remember this article last year

"When Congress passed a new energy law two years ago, obituaries were written for the incandescent light bulb. The law set tough efficiency standards, due to take effect in 2012(?), that no traditional incandescent bulb on the market could meet, and a century-old technology that helped create the modern world seemed to be doomed."

"But as it turns out, the obituaries were premature." ...
"The incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation."

"There's a massive misperception that incandescents are going away quickly," said Chris Calwell, a researcher with Ecos Consulting who studies the bulb market. "There have been more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades."

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So it would seem that GE just doesn't want to invest in the US and instead make the same crap it's already making more cheaply in China.