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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.'"
GE needs to team up with Cree and retrofit their factory for making the next generation LED bulbs.
This is a great solution to the 'too many patents' problem in a story earlier today. No lightbulbs means no ideas right?
Yes, it sucks that the market for candles disappeared but you have to adapt and compete. If you can't make CFLs competitively, then you lose your job. It's that simple.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
OK, how exactly were they "sold out by GE"?
The plant wasn't profitable currently, was going to be made obsolete by law in a couple of years, and was not even remotely profitable to refit to producing the CFLs.
So they should just pay people to work for the heck of it?
It's easy for stuff to be 50% less in a factory town where works are just meat and they work super overtime with no overtime pay. Also over seas it costs less to pay off / bribe gov into looking the other way over them breaking over time and worker rights laws.
GE is looking out for themselves. Making light bulbs overseas is cheaper, so they do it without one bit of shame. Which is fine, they're a corporation, their duty is to their shareholders. If their shareholders want profits, they have to do it cheaper.
The US government has duties to the citizens. Unfortunately this can put some citizens out of sorts, because the needs of the whole may be different. Sorry, but it happened with the buggy whip makers, it'll happen with the light bulb ones.
Hopefully these employees are getting retraining, education, and whatever other resources they need to find jobs. You can certainly differ over whether or not the restrictions of light bulbs are appropriate, but we can't just throw our hands up and do nothing. If you have better ideas, please give them instead of just offering criticism.
I would rather hear dumb ideas than just hearing that you think all ideas are dumb.
In the manufacture of physical things it's very hard to compete with companies operating in other countries that have less worker protections, less environmental protections, and non-existent employee benefits.
Either we stop buying from manufacturers located in these countries or we push our legislators to prohibit the import of items manufactured under these conditions.
OR
We lower our standard of living to a 3rd world standard to "compete". Is throwing away your standard of living worth cheap light bulbs?
-ted
I loath CFL lights. They don't last ANYWHERE near the reports say they will. Yet the power LED on one of my computers is still happily running (after 24 hours a day for 10 years).
And LEDs don't require you to use a hazmat suit to pick up pieces if you break one (since they contain Mercury).
UPS Sucks
"It's easy for stuff to be 50% less in a factory town where works are just meat and they work super overtime with no overtime pay. "
The reality of competing with cheap workers will require a reset so our workers become cheap. Productivity is high with few workers, but if more workers are to have jobs, they will have to work for less, live less well, and be like the rest of the world.
The main reason the US did so well for so long was it was the "last country standing" after WWII, which was the best thing ever to happen to the US economy.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s.
In other news GE has sold their buggy whip division...
This is not sad news except maybe for the employees who work there. Incandescent bulbs are a technology which has seen its day but it's day is pretty much at an end. They'll continue to be manufactured for some time but not by GE. Anyone who would expect GE to continue to manufacture an obsolete product with rapidly dwindling market share is a moron. The growth opportunities in lighting are with newer technology such as CFL and LED lighting. This is not something to shed a single tear over. Sentimentality in a situation like this is just bizarre.
Just efficiency levels. You can choose any technology that meets that efficiency standard.
When energy costs and availability affect our way of life and security so much, using a statism to attack a move as logical as this just doesn't make sense.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
So that's 1/5th of all the energy used in residences.
That's not minuscule.
Your last argument is ridiculous. Every bit counts, just because one thing isn't done doesn't mean another thing done isn't useful.
And by they way they ARE mandating better fuel standards. The CAFE (required fuel economy average of cars sold) goes up 2.5mpg next year (first raise in a decade) and will go up another 4.8mpg over the next 8 years.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I already do have the right to burn as much energy unnecessarily as I want, though. The government didn't even ban most of the bigger ones; they banned a really tiny one that seems to be mostly out of image and spite.
To use your example, driving old cars is not banned, and they're even grandfathered in from just about all newer regulations. Running an unnecessarily ridiculous 500 Watt home computer is not banned. Keeping your home air-conditioned to 72 degrees (which many peopl actually do) is not banned either. Buying a Hummer 2 to go grocery shopping isn't banned. Installing single-paned windows isn't banned. Etc., etc.
Plus in my particular case, incandescent bulbs are around 100% efficient. I live in an area with a climate that's around 50-60 most of the year, which is cool enough to need some heating, but not cold enough to be worth the expense of getting a gas furnace installed. So I use a moderate amount of electrical heating to keep it up around the mid-60s (I don't really mind it being somewhat cool). Any "waste heat" from bulbs, the stove, or the computer substitutes 1-for-1 for the electrical heater.
Of course, you could ban electrical heaters, too. ;-)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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?
In 3 to 5 years when all the CFLs start dying, there will be a huge furor over the mercury they contain leeching into landfills.
Even with the most conservative estimates for mercury output and the proportion of power generated by coal and the most unforgiving ones for CFL mercury content and power savings, the power saved by CFLs results in less mercury being released into the environment than they could themselves release.
http://www.energy.gs/2007/05/cfl-mercury-myths.html
http://www.energyrace.com/commentary/more_on_mercury_coal_and_cfls_updated/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/reviews/news/4217864
So this can cut energy usage in the US by about 1.75%.
And you say it doesn't count? That's a lot of energy.
Passenger cars use about 14% of the energy in the US. You would like to increase fuel economy average in cars 5mpg. This would reduce that energy use about 15% (5mpg out of 32mpg). That's an energy reduction of 2.2%.
So you ridicule one mandate as trivially small and suggest one that is only 25% larger as the real answer? Especially when the lighting one can be much more easily implemented as it is much easier and cheaper to replace light bulbs than to replace your car.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
In 3 to 5 years when all the CFLs start dying, there will be a huge furor over the mercury they contain leeching into landfills.
Or not.
In the United States, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that if all 270 million compact fluorescent lamps sold in 2007 were sent to landfill sites, that this would represent around 0.13 metric tons, or 0.1% of all U.S. emissions of mercury (around 104 metric tons that year.) Compact fluorescent lamp
Actually what needs to happen for America to stay competitive with China is for an oppressive fascist authoritarian government to seize power and subsequently squelch all dissent as party loyalist pillage the country. Then we would be apples to apples the same as China and that future doesn't seem to be too far off.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
The mercury released from a CFLs deposited in a landfill if they aren't recycled is, with the current electricity generating mix in the US, less than the average quantity of mercury released into the environment from electricity generation (burning coal) to supply the additional energy consumed to power incandescent bulbs over CFLs. (Source)
Why? Because you want more mercury released into the environment?
FWIW, I think thermostat threshholds aren't actually entirely ridiculous. For residential usage I imagine there'd be a backlash, but there's no reason so many square feet of office space have to be a/c'd to 72 or even 70 constantly.
For home energy usage, though, why micromanage what I do within my energy budget, so long as my total energy usage is quite low? I personally hate CFLs for reading, and I don't think my three total incandescent bulbs (225W total when all on) are really killing the environment. That's why I think just going by total usage is more fair. If my neighbor wants to run a ridiculous thermostat and television, and I don't, why can't I use my energy savings on something I prefer? My whole apartment probably uses less than 50% of the average energy around here, so I'd pass any actually objective threshholds anyone chose to impose.
But with this per-item efficiency thing, I can't run 225W of incandescent bulbs, but my neighbor can run 2000W of home-theater equipment? How is that fair or pro-environment?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Any adult working a minimum wage job in the US qualifies for public assistance in a variety of ways. Employers who pay this wage are effectively being subsidized by the government.
There is no benefit to the US economy to have subsidized businesses operating in its economy. And subsidized low wage employees are a disincentive to capital investment to improve the productivity of workers, which is ultimately a drag on the economy.
China's low wages, effectively managed by excessively low Yuan valuation are a big disincentive to modernization there. Eventually I am sure that China will realize that mercantilism on the scale they are attempting won't work - you can't drag 1.3 billion people to modern consumer lifestyles by selling cheap light bulbs to a country with a population of 300 million.
We just don't need that many light bulbs.
And building an economic model based on sub min wage workers who are government subsidized so they won't starve is flat out stupid.
Not only that, but you can get a 3x improvement in efficiency by replacing those inefficient electrical resistance based heaters with a heat-pump.
A standard 90% efficient gas furnace will also be more energy efficient than electrical resistance heating (since the best power plants are only about 60% efficient and most of our electricity currently comes from burning fossil fuels.
Now - if you life in an area where most of your electricity is generated from renewables or nuclear - that changes things a bit.
Bad math and Jenny McCarthy-style pseudo science (with a Fox question mark no less!).
I'm ashamed of you slashdot.
Fluorescents are 3x as efficient as incandescents. Yes, the efficiency is exaggerated on the labels because the bulbs don't quite put out as much light as the incandescents they are comparing against. But even if you correct for that fluorescents are far more efficient.
Heck, to prove it, just light up a bulb and touch it. Feel that heat on the incandescent? That's wasted energy that didn't go to light. Now touch an equivalently bright fluorescent bulb, it's only a little warm.
Power factor doesn't mean it's using more power than you would think from the wattage, it means it's using more CURRENT and less voltage. Anyway, changing phase like this (low power factor) doesn't mean that the meter isn't measuring correctly. If this were true, people would be strapping inductors onto the lines in their house right before the meter to get free power.
Power factor is only an issue for the electric company, they have to adjust for it. And they are adept at adjusting for it. This is evidenced by how the electric companies are very interested in you using CFLs, my electric company sends me mail about it twice a year. If the low power factors of CFLs presented problems to them, they wouldn't do this, would they?
If you don't like bluish CFLs, get yellowish ones. There are 3 colors, one is very yellow.
I agree LEDs still have limitations. I'd like to get some for my hallway but I"m not ready to make that move yet.
Dimmers are not suitable for fluorescent or LED bulbs, each should really be dimmed with a control signal instead of a rheostat. Hopefully this kind of technology will be common in homes soon so we can get rid of the buzzing from dimming fluorescent and LEDs.
The government is subsidizing your fossil fuels significantly. You don't see it in your bill, because it isn't being subsidized by giving you money to give the electric companies to pay for electricity. We massively subsidize oil drilling and production.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=how-much-in-subsidies-do-fossil-fue-2009-09-18
Your electric bill would be noticeably higher without these subsidies and solar would look correspondingly a little cheaper.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95