Light Bulb Ban Produces Hoarding In EU, FUD In U.S.

Lucas123 writes "The very thought of losing that pear-shaped giver of warm, yellow light drove Europeans to hoard Edison's invention [Note: Or possibly Joseph Swan's invention; HT to eldavojohn.] as the EU's Sept. 1 ban on incandescent light bulbs approached. China's ban on incandescent lamps starts Oct. 1. And, in the U.S., the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 effectively began banning the 100W bulb this year and will ban the most popular bulbs — the 75W, 60W and 40W screw-in incandescent bulbs --over the next two years. The end standard requires bulbs to use 65% less energy by 2020. But Republicans in Congress continue to fight the ban by hamstringing the energy efficiency standards through appropriations legislation, cutting off funds for the enforcement of the light bulb ban."

Comments

republicans

[schlachter]

fighting any and all innovation while hating on the gay and poor and giving to the rich...and now they're against energy efficiency? Amazing.

Re:republicans

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us cannot use CFLs. The pulse is visible and causes eye strain and headaches. Slight exaggeration here, however it seems that you need to put small children in a hazmat suit when playing near the bulbs, you know, just in case they break. :)

When LEDs are made to be cost effective, I'll give those a try, otherwise, bug off and let me heat my home in the winter with my nice toasty bulbs and pay a bit more doing it. :)

BTW - Partisanship politics at slashdot. I am shocked. Let me see if I can enlighten you (100% pun intended). Most Republicans don't care if someone is Gay or not, they care if they pay into the system. The issue on the table related to Gays and Republicans is related to the term marriage, which has a biblical definition to many in the states. The answer is quite simple, redefine the legal term for marriage for all to be "civil unions" (or whatever) and fork over the same rights to gay couples as straight. Few Republicans would care about that answer. I'll skip over economics as that is likely a bit too involved for this crowd. :)

Re:republicans

[allometry]

My understanding of their argument is how efficiency is met as a goal. If you read the story, Representative Burgess said, "It's something the market place should determine. Let consumers make the choice. There was no reason for the government to make that choice for them."

That doesn't sound like standing against innovation or hating on, "the gay." Certainly, it doesn't sound like that's giving to the rich. In fact, banning incandescents seems like it's going to cost us more money. Where you or I may be OK paying extra for a bulb that lasts twenty years, perhaps the poor you're talking about, the ones that do count pennies, will be fucked at the register when they can't replace something that used to be less than a buck.

But this is for a greater cause, right? I mean, energy efficiency. We've got to break a few eggs to make omelets here!

I'm all for a cleaner, safer, planet. But, I'm more in favor of individual freedoms and responsibilities. However, those pesky poor people and their damn hoarding. If only they were as rich as our dear leaders in DC, maybe this wouldn't be a problem.

"It's something the market place should determine. Let consumers make the choice. There was no reason for the government to make that choice for them."

Re:republicans

[theendlessnow]

I used to remember a time when it was the Republican that were trying to legislate behavior (morality). Now it's time for the Democrats to do this apparently.

Regulation about light bulb standards is certainly a thing that can be done, but wouldn't it be nice if people chose the "right" light bulb because it's "right" and not because they were forced to choose the "right" one? (and why are the Democrats so interested in "right"?... always thought they leaned left...)

Re:republicans

[Stirling Newberry]

Specifically you are very much in favor of having someone else pay for that cleaner planet.

Re:republicans

[jfengel]

Republicans seem to feel that the marketplace moves infinitely fast, and that there are no barriers to entry, and that there are no external costs. In reality, some problems require foresight and planning that the market is incapable of doing on its own.

I'm all for individual freedoms, and I'm actually not crazy about the bulb ban. It's a (less than-) half measure made politically feasible by the fact that it's a simple thing that people can see directly in front of them as a way to save energy.

I'd much rather see a market-based approach, in which carbon costs and fossil fuel depletion externalities were internalized via a carbon tax. A gradual increase in the cost of electricity would encourage people to buy new, efficient forms of lighting via purely economic forces. But Republicans will absolutely not hear of any sort of tax, far less one oriented towards fixing a problem they have repeatedly called a hoax. And that kind of straight-out falsehood interferes with the proper operation of markets more than any regulation on light bulbs.

In the presence of obstruction, the legislative free market will proceed in a bastardized way, just as economics predicts. And so instead of a clean, straightforward, and economically sensible plan, we get a ridiculous one that's just slightly better than nothing because it was all we can get.

I'd dearly love to see the legislative market proceed by letting actual facts and level-headed decision making guide the day, but in the absence of that, we're going to get mostly heat and little light.

Ban is dumb

[JMZero]

Should be a tax. Encourage people to make the right choices, but don't screw people who have special circumstances or are willing to compensate society for the cost of their preference.

Re:Ban is dumb

[rockytopchip]

There already is a built in tax. Buy the less efficient bulb, pay more for energy costs. Some people prefer incandescent bulbs, do you want to take away their freedom to choose? Let the market decide the issue, keep government out of it.

Re:Ban is dumb

[Imsdal]

Taxes should indeed be used to modify behavior. High taxes on energy, tobacco and alcohol makes perfect sense. High taxes on labor makes no sense. In this case, taxing energy should be enough to make cheaper sources of light preferrable for consumers.

Re:Ban is dumb

[Imsdal]

No, the same should be true for "energy use", not "incandescent light bulbs". It's energy we should tax, not one particular thing that consumes energy but has other positive effects that the replacements don't have. (And, for the nitpickers, energy should be taxed high enough to regulate behaviour, but not "into oblivion", obviously.)

Re:Ban is dumb

[tlhIngan]

There already is a built in tax. Buy the less efficient bulb, pay more for energy costs. Some people prefer incandescent bulbs, do you want to take away their freedom to choose? Let the market decide the issue, keep government out of it.

Actually, if you follow human behavior, you'd find that the "choice" would be limited to incandescent bulbs. Necessity is the mother of invention, and without these bans, we'd still be using incandescents - CFLs would be a niche, and white LEDs a purely decorative thing. Instead we have CFLs of all shapes, sizes, instant-on, dimmable, "cool" vs. "warm". And we have LED lights that are practically indistinguisable from incandescent (which are actually getting cheaper - from $100 to under $40 and much less on sale).

And the ban wasn't on incandescents, it was a ban on inefficiency. If you can make a more efficient incandescent (I believe GE has - it's nowhere near as efficient as a CFL or LED, but it is above the efficiency threshold), it can still be sold.

So even incandescents have improved in efficiency. How is that a bad thing? More innovation in the humble light bulb.

If you don't force companies to adapt, they'll continue doing the same old thing every day. Even giant rich ones - remember the Montreal Protocol and CFC-free asthma inhalers? They had a quarter of a decade to phase out CFC usage, and they only complain about "tight" deadlines a couple of years prior to when their exemption expires. Well, yes it's a tight deadline if you only started at the second half of the first decade of the millennium, but you did have well over a decade prior to develop new propellants in time for approvals.

It's very rare that industries see change coming and start to embrace it, though even that came with pushes and shoves. E.g., general aviation currently uses 100LL avgas - it's still a leaded fuel and demand is quite low (basically the only refinery can produce the annual supply in a day), requires special handling (leaded and unleaded gas require separate processing equipment to prevent contamination), and special licensing. Plus, there's only one source in the world of tetraethyl lead, from the UK. And with environmentalists clamoring with the EPA over regulation of leaded fuels (FAA is overriding that for safety reasons), the writing's on the wall for leaded gas. So what happened is the entire industry is getting together to do a pile of R&D to produce the next-gen unleaded avgas, compatible with 100LL and leaded engines. (The requirements are different enough that while the auto fleet switched to unleaded in a few years in the 80s, a lot more work would go in recertifying aircraft to use unleaded).

Hell, see telephone and cable companies with what's happening with VoIP and streaming. Or the music and movie industry.

Industries have to be pushed to change.

Re:Ban is dumb

[cdrguru]

The problem is the energy difference is almost insignificant when the bulb cost is factored in. If the bulbs were the same price there might be a point to it all, but that is far from the case.

Even the cheap Chinese-made CFL bulbs are 10x what an incandescent bulb costs and the promised lifespan hasn't materialized for most people. So you get a bulb that lasts 2x but costs 10x. Yes, there is lower energy use and lower energy costs, but the difference is pennies.

Maybe the solution is to make electricity too expensive to use - you know, something like $1.50/Kwh. That would make CFL and LED bulbs far more cost effective - except that I think most people would simply be forced to do without.

So, how about some real energy savings? Everyone can go outside and bottle up some fireflies. We could have a new company that sells bottled-up fireflies for home use. Anyone know what the lifespan of a bottle of fireflies is?

Labelling

[slim]

Is there yet a way to tell at time of purchase whether a CFL bulb is going to warm up in an acceptable time?

I'm assured that bulbs exist that reach a decent brightness in under 10 seconds, but I have yet to manage to buy one.

Re:All Edison's fault

[mellon]

The irony is that there's now a huge market for modernized versions of the original edison bulbs, which radiate far more in the infrared and red, and far less in the colder portions of the spectrum. I was at a metting in the Andaz Hotel in downtown Manhattan last week, and they had chandeliers with maybe 20-30 of these bulbs each, producing very little light and a lot of heat, and then they had a separate cove lighting system so that we could actually _see_.

So basically, a massive waste of energy solely for the purpose of fashion, which wasn't even at all attractive, and made several people quite uncomfortable because of the heat output. Oh, plus they probably had to crank up the AC to keep the room from overheating.

It's a damned shame that Edison couldn't have invented the remote-phosphor LED lighting system, and instead forced Philips to do his dirty work a century later. But that's the way things go. Both he and Tesla were way too enamored of basic electricity. :)

What astonishes me is that people aren't installing more of these Philips lights—they are amazing. You can't tell the difference between them and incandescents, but they last forever, use minimal power, and look _really_ cool (but don't look at them when they're on—they're _bright_!).

Re:All Edison's fault

[MickyTheIdiot]

That's a bit unfair, don't you think? You're asking Edison to know the future here. He didn't have The Doctor to take him away in the TARDIS and show him what the consequences of pollution would be. They probably didn't think there would be any consequences and they probably had no idea how widespread the use of energy would be.

Only by the idiots....

[Lumpy]

The light bulb ban is for the old incandescent. the halogens are NOT banned and work just as good and look just as good. It's all nutjobs that got foaming at the mouth over misinformation. If they had actually taken the time to go and educate themselves instead of listening to the sensationalist talking heads trying to tun something moot into a news story to milk they would have known this.

Your only choise is not only LED or "curly que" CFL bulbs. And anyone that took 3 minutes to look it up would have known this.

Bulbs

[JBMcB]

The *vast* majority of electricity consumed in the US is from the industrial and commercial sectors, who already almost exclusively use fluorescent lighting. Residential lighting electricity use is a drop in the overall bucket. This legislation is silly.

I'll be stocking up on GE Reveal incandescent bulbs - the best reading bulbs in existence. The new GE Edison halogen bulbs are also very good, but with the rather insane push for CFL's, they are hard to find. I'll be upgrading to LEDs once the price is right, and the dispersion problems are fixed. Screw CFLs, they are the discrete flip-chips of the lighting world (for the uninitiated, nearly obsolete upon introduction)

What are the replacements?

[caseih]

So what, realistically are the replacements? CFL is out for me, since -40 weather is hard on them. Also I have 20 pivot irrigation systems that have telltale lights on them and CFLs would burn out in a week there (end tower light turns on and off with the motor at least once a minute, and some center tower lights have blinkers on them). My shop has a bunch of 200W rough service bulbs as well. CFL is not going to replace that. I understand there are cold-weather flourescent tubes I can install, but they are much more expensive than incandescents, and the fact they are only turned on for days out of the year total makes any efficiency benefits moot.

Someone mentioned before the ban isn't on incandescents per se, but on inefficient bulbs. So will there be higher-efficiency incandescents out there? Some sort of hybrid? Besides CFL and LED, what is really happening in the the incandescent area?

Re:All Edison's fault

[popeye44]

Fucking Brilliant "pun intendend" require by code enforcement that every house have a dimmable switch or an automatic shutoff,
Now make a law that says I cannot buy incandescent bulbs.. but if I put fluorescent bulbs in I burn out the switch or they use power constantly because they cannot be turned OFF.

This is fucking ridiculous I'd rather heat my house with incandescent bulbs than continue to replace switches and burn out "energy saving" bulbs every 30 days. This is a waste of fucking time and my money.Just how environmentally conscious are we when we put 5 million fluorescent bulbs in the same landfill. 5 milligrams of mercury in each bulb which is enough to poison 6,000 gallons of water. I'm sorry but that just seems incredibly fucked up. When is the last time you immediately had to open a window and put on a mask in your house because you dropped an incandescent bulb.

  I'd give a LOT to have led's everywhere in a place where they would provide a good bit of light. My main issue is cost. I will indeed check the philips LED's.

Re:Fuck Green

[daem0n1x]

I live in Europe and fail to see this "hoarding" thing. I call bullshit. Most people I know have been using CFLs for years. Who wants to use lamps that:

1. Spend energy like hell,
2. Create lots of heat,
3. Need to be replaced all the time?

Re:LED is freakishly expensive up front

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Beyond just the fact that up-front costs suck, if you're poor and your kid knocks over your lamp you're out $23. If you're poor and you move then unless you plan on bringing your bulbs with you, risking shattering them in the move, you're out the $23 each.

$23 is dinner for a week if you're poor. It's only a light bulb if you're rich.

Re:All Edison's fault

[HornWumpus]

Life of a CFL is x hours or y on/off cycles.

All the comparisons assume they will live x hours. They suck for bathrooms or anyplace where the bulb only stays on for a short time.

Re:All Edison's fault

[NevarMore]

It did help that our local power utility subsidized these bulbs, they're expensive - between $40 - $50 a pop. I got mine for half price because of the subsidy.

No you got yours for half price up front, with the remaining half coming from either your electric bill or taxes over time. No such thing as a free lunch.

Re:All Edison's fault

[postbigbang]

In reality, there is no 100% efficiency. Bulbs and heating elements are transducers, and they have poor-moderate conversion; the problem is subsequent radiation of the heat to its intended target.

If you're getting 400-500% efficiency, this means you're inventing energy as you get 100% max. Any more, any more and you're opening up a hole from another dimension to let energy in. I want to know how to do that.

Re:All Edison's fault

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

I can imagine a lawyer saying "interesting", which is a word you never want to hear from a lawyer if you're the one paying.

It would be really hard to ban resistance heating. If those resistance heaters happened to be in a near-vacuum, with tungsten instead of nichrome, someone could argue it's still the same thing. Then the home center store relocates the 100-watt bulbs to the space heater section, where they belonged in the first place.

Let the free market decide

[rcb1974]

This should not be the roll of government in my opinion. Let the free market decide. Yes, CFLs and LEDs have their place, but so do incandescent bulbs! If people want to buy incandescent bulbs, they should be allowed to get them at affordable prices. Let me tell you two stories about how incandescent bulbs are better than CFLs or LEDs.

My father and I used to work on cars together all year round including the winter. The trouble light we used had an incandescent 100W bulb. We used it for light AND heat! Anytime our hands got cold after gripping a freezing wrench, we would just place them around the light bulb and warm them up quickly. Now, the government is stepping in and telling me that they're smarter than me and that I need to use a CFL or LED bulb instead, which doesn't output nearly as much heat. So instead of having 1 power cord to deal under a freezing car, I am going to have to have 2; one for a light, and another for a heat source. LAME.

I know someone who replaced bulbs on a airport runways. The heat from incandescent bulbs is advantageous in street lights and runways in cold climate because the heat melts the snow which would obscure the light emitted from the bulb!

I am tired of the government pretending to be smarter than the invisible hand of the free market. Rand Paul talked about this. Search for: light bulbs rand paul congress.

Re:All Edison's fault

[serbanp]

If by efficiency one means the ratio between the heat energy extracted and the electrical energy spent in the process, the GP is correct.

Yes, a heat-pump is 400-500% efficient (depending on the outside temperature). For instance, 1kWh of electrical energy brings in my house about 4.5kWh of heat.

By the same measure, an electric radiator is only 100%, i.e. 1kWh of electrical energy produces exactly 1kWh of heat.

My PG&E bill is proof of the efficiency difference; after installing my Daikin system, I went down from Tier3 to Tier1 (baseline).

Re:All Edison's fault

[sexconker]

It hasn't occurred to you that a ban on incandescents for lighting might just exclude incandescents for heating in industrial applications?

It hasn't occurred to you that a ban on incandescents for lighting might just make manufacturers stop producing them in massive quantities, thus driving up the price for anyone who still needs them?

Alternatively: It sure is cheap and easy to buy a CRT display these days!