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60% of Americans Unaware of Looming Incandescent Bulb Phase Out
Lucas123 writes "Even though production of 75W and 100W incandescent lamps were phased out earlier this year, many U.S. consumers remain blissfully unaware of The Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007, an energy efficiency standard that requires an initial 30% reduction in energy use for screw-in bulbs. By 2020, the federal standard requires bulbs to use 65% less energy. According to a new survey, only 40% of Americans are aware that incandescent bulbs are being phased out. However, the federal regulations are about to impact the most popular bulbs of all — 40W and 60W lamps. As of Jan. 1, 2014, the bulbs will no longer be produced. A significant portion of those who are aware of the phase out have been hoarding the bulbs in anticipation of the ban."
If you have a brain, you got rid of those fucking things more than 5 years ago.
LED light bulbs have low cost and no flicker. If you need a specific lighting profile there's plenty of sites that'll sell it to you. I find it hard getting upset that incandescents are going away. It's not like we're going to pay for the power infrastructure to support them...
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LEDs are cheaper. But some basic understanding of math and economics is required to see that. People that fail at that may get to conclusions such as yours.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
We have been going through this phase out (Switzerland) and while I was using "neon" tubes and halogens I am switching to LED's. They are awesome. Low energy, last forever, very bright, and do not generate any heat. IMO LED's have come a very long way in a very short time.
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"Even though production of 75W and 100W incandescent lamps were phased out earlier this year, many U.S. consumers remain blissfully unaware of The Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007
They will happily swap the burned out bulbs with whatever is available in the store and most of them wouldn't notice much difference. Couple will find that some of the stuff they bought does not work with dimmer switches or some bulbs tend to be a bit bulky and don't fit in certain very tight enclosures. All of those will be swapped for free back in the store with suitable replacements. So what's the point of preparing in advance for the switch or knowing about it?
Now, the people hoarding incandescent bulbs are a bit more puzzling. Some of them probably have a get-rich-quick plan kicking into action and all I can say is good for them. The ones that are actively trying to avoid switching away from incandescent bulbs are completely different story. WTF people? What's the point of massively inconveniencing yourself with the storage of fragile items only to pay higher electric bills.
They are designed to drain our precious bodily fluids.
How is this surprising?
60% of Americans not keeping up with nation politics? Heck didn't 60% not even bother voting at some point? Don't 60% still think the world was made by an omnipotent being in 7 days?
Go to lowes or home depot and look for dimmable LED bulbs. I have had better lick with those than with dimmable CFLs, which indeed require you to upgrade the dimmer switch. Having said this unless you insist of having dimmable light in your bath, I would suggest just to get a 70 cent light switch and replace the dimmer.
its safe to dim a led just get one that's made for a dimmer.
At home the light switches have a dim blue light to be visible in the dark. It seems to be rigged in series with the circuit, so it lights up only when a lightbulb is in the socket. If fluorescent bulbs are installed, they (the bulbs!) will flicker all night long. Also the fluorescent bulbs installed in the bathroom die out very early from the moist. LEDs may be a good solution, but I've yet to find ones that give out enough red tones.
They aren't banned, as you can still buy the rough service bulbs. Newcandescent among others sells them for $2-3 a pop, and they have a 10000 hour life instead of the 1000 hour life that normal bulbs claim. They are cheaper and the light is easier on the eyes than any of the alternatives available at this time. Go rough service, I have a whole case on order and they should last me for decades.
One way they get the longer lifetime of the bulbs is to use a thicker filament, and they rate the lumens at 130V, while most homes are going to have 110 - 120V delivered to their homes, so you're getting less light out of the bulb.
You can get a quaility Halogen replacement bulb that will provide 100W equivalent performance while using only about 70 watts and will last 3500 hours for around $5.
I don't know if you think you're making a stand against government, but if you use the rough service bulbs instead of more efficient bulbs, you're costing yourself more money and getting less light than if you just bought an efficient halogen replacement.
How much more? At 4 hours/day the $2.50 10000 hour Rough Service bulb will last almost 7 years, while you'd need 3 of the 3500 hour $5 halogens to last that long, so you'll end up paying $12.50 more for the bulbs. However, saving 30 watts means 306KWh of energy savings for the Halogen, or around $36 at 12 cents/KWh.
So, you'll spend over $20 for the privilege of having less light, but you'll have proven why legislation was needed to get people to select bulbs that save them money.
Or are you going to claim that even halogen incandescents don't provide the same quality of light as conventional incandescents?
Lava lamps use a small, specialty lamp size that is unaffected by this ban, just like refrigerator and stove bulbs. The ban is only on standard-sized, non-long-life incandescent bulbs at specific wattages.
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My wife hates incandescents and LED are still too expensive.
I think you meant to say that your wife only likes incandescents, otherwise the incandescent ban won't affect you.
If she really wants to stick with incandescents, you could use energy efficient halogens that are still incandescents and are around 30% more efficient than traditional incandescents.
It needs to be big not so much because of the amount of heat, but because the LEDs themselves are rather intolerant of excessive heat.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Hmm. 1000bulbs.com
A 60W equivalent LED bulb. $36 each.
A 60W equivalent CFL enclosed bulb. $12 each.
Hmm. Menards.com
A 60W Incandescent: $4 for a 4-pack.
Yeah. Sure. Cheap.
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If you're in a coal-fired powerstation area, then it's still a major win. There's mercury in the bulbs, but mercury is released by burning coal and the power savings more than outweigh what's in the bulb.
Go buy some 40W actual (Think that's 60W equivalent) halogen bulbs. Same heat to melt the wax, but more light.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Incandescent technology is far superior to LEDs for electrothermal conversion efficiency. LEDs waste too much energy as visible light.
I don't think you could have sourced a more expensive place for 60-watt replacements. I just bought a 4-pack of CFLs at Home Depot for under $4. And that's the good Phillips brand. The fancy GE enclosed CFLs with the starter halogen inside go for about $5. The Phillips 60W-equivalent LED is $10, with the Cree going for slightly more.
I'm not arguing that the phase out is a good thing, but let's be realistic about the price drops.
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> LEDs also have better color rendition capability than CFLs.
It would be hard not to.
To some people having a nice warm spectrum from a bulb doesn't matter to them. But to others, inhabiting in a space lit by these new bulbs is like living in a morgue. Where I live it is dark 16 hours a day this time of year and usually overcast during the daytime. To me, the increased energy cost is worth it to live in a space that doesn't make me want to jump out the nearest window in despair. I am glad halogen bulbs will still be available because they are the only acceptable option right now.
Good grief. Turn off some lights when you're not using them man! Your drop in price for changing bulbs more than doubles my total monthly electric bill.
Of course, the fact that people who do not pay so much for electricity will not make the money back so quickly might suggest why some do not upgrade so quickly. Different circumstances result in different calculations. (I note this even though I myself moved away from incandescents years ago.)
It's also worth noting that LEDs last for at least 50k hours. The failure mode is that they get dimmer, not that they fail completely. Whereas that $1 light bulb will last for about 1000 hours. Maybe more, maybe less, depends on the setting and the individual variations in manufacture. So a $1 light bulb is actually quite a bit more expensive than a good-quality LED light bulb. Don't waste your money on the cheap ones. If you're desperate to continue using incandescent, get halogen bulbs—they produce good light and consume about 70% of the power doing it. But we're using Cree bulbs and loving them. The really cheap ones have lousy color rendering, but the Cree bulbs do really well.
So if you're paying below market rates, you might as well use less efficient light bulbs? Sounds like a classic market failure. CFLs suck—don't waste your money. If you are poor, get halogen or cheap LEDs. If you can afford it, get more expensive LEDs. Volume will bring the price down.
I bought an adapter to allow the two prong style fixtures to accept a screw-in traditional bulb. look for a gu24 to e26 adapter. I bought some for about $2 each from a huge online retailer. They work great for adapting to the common screw bulbs until the new style is more available.
But if I have my lights on for 5 hours a day in the evening, that 50k hours becomes nearly 30 years.
Yes, LED's are cheaper in the long run, both in capital and running costs. But the payoff periods are pretty long. You may get better value for money buying incandescent bulbs and investing the money saved in power companies.
Yup, I was thrilled to see Cree finally come out with a bulb! Decent light distribution, not very heavy, and the 60watt is actually too bright for many places in my home. I have a bunch of these and a bunch of all th eothers too that I've been buying for a good while now to play with. The Cree aren't uber sophisticated but they work wonderfully well! To date I've only had one LED give me issues and it was part of a pack from Costco that was dirt cheap and flashed at me. Every other I've bought in the last 2 years is still going strong. They use peanuts for power too :-)
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Depends on what you are looking for. A couple years ago, I bought a bunch of 12 volt LEDs for my RV, a buck each from eBay, with free shipping (although it took a few weeks to get here). Said lights, though high on the color temperature scale, are still going strong, and use 1/7 as much electricity as the normal filament bulbs, which is very useful when boondocking.
Since most LEDs are made overseas anyway, one might be able to find a no-name Taiwanese provider who sells the same bulbs as a name brand, but for far less.
I'm using some of the LED floods from that Home Depot page as well as some Cree and the ones with the yellow phosphor on them. The floods use maybe 20watts apiece and replaced bulbs drawing 120watts apiece. They dim fine, they throw a ton of light, and I know they don't get hot although outside I could care less. The packages on that page are multipacks but when I first started buying bulbs single bulbs could be as much as $40 - they're still running 2 years later. I've swapped out a ton of the older bulbs and many of the fluorescent ones too. So far no LED have burned out on me and they light well. I no longer feel the need to keep a bunch of bubs in the closet - I don't ever need replacements. I couldn't say that before!
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You have no clue. Neither of physics, basic math or economics. And you are completely unaware of that.
Electricity is by far the most expensive way to generate heat. The other thing is that LED costs something like 15-20% of a classical bulb over its lifetime. If you assume replacement of a classical bulb costs 5 minutes each time including shopping, the bulb costs $2 and keeps 1000h, and you can earn $5 per hour, then classical bulbs costs $240 over the lifetime of a comparable LED bulb. Accident risk on replacement not included. Energy savings not included. Pretty stupid to insist on historic technology under these conditions. But well, we have already established that you are stupid. Please feel free to disgrace yourself further.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Stupidity always has unpleasant consequences. The problem is not the individual manifestation of stupidity, but the stupidity itself. Your examples are pretty stupid. there are LED-based replacements even for the bulbs in an Easy Bake oven. Heating engines up with incandescent bulbs is extremely dangerous, don't do it. There are safer alternatives for that.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
About 6 years ago I switched over to CFLs. I dealt with the crappy light quality, flicker, and high failure rate. Then my wife broke a CFL literally inches from my 2-year old's face. I'm thinking "meh, I played with mercury thermometers as a kid. big deal". But then I read about vaporized mercury (yes, it goes to solid dust when not pressurized but still) and visited the EPA website which, at the time, recommended I replaced the carpet in the bedroom. Not cool. My wife was in a state of panic over the possible mercury inhaled by our 2-year old. We obviously have no idea about how much mercury he was exposed to. I know that eating several fish is probably equivalent to the same amount of mercury, but there is a difference between inhaled dust and food digested by your stomach. At which point I switched the entire house back to incadescent. And I bought a shitload of 75W and 100W bulbs (probably a 10 year supply). Now granted nowadays I'd just buy LEDs, but cheap LEDs weren't available in 2009-ish. After that experience and given my stock of incadescents, I'm going to keep using incadescents until my stock runs out. I can afford it and I don't a flying fuck about what others think. I do far more to reduce carbon emissions in other ways. That said, I'll only buy a small stock of 40W / 60W. LEDs are good enough nowadays that I see myself switching to those (but you never know when you want a cheap lightbulb for a cheap temporary lamp or something).
You are not correct, electricity is NOT the most expensive way to generate heat, IF you do it through a heat pump (which generates 3X the heat per dollar of baseboard which is cheaper than all other forms of heat, and a heat pump fed by geothermal, ie ground source is best of all for the majority of the US except the deep south). Resistance based heat on the other hand is often the most expensive source of heat, though if I'm not mistaken oil based heat is pretty close in much of the country (electric baseboard heat is nearly 100% efficient and oil is 80% or less). I'm studying HVAC at the moment though my background is in computer science and I love the geeky side of the field. I am strongly considering converting a huge commercial building and my own home to goethermal (ground sourced heat pump) due to the incredible efficiencies.
Look up marine wiring and the American Boat and Yachting Council wiring regs. Annoying complex but very clear about how to string 12 - 24 volts around in difficult conditions. You will have to get used to a different color code and they've not heard of Anderson Power Poles (wonderful connectors) but applicable to land use as well.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Rich idiots in privileged settings come up with this crap and force it down the throats of the rest of us,
Nothing like a bit of ad hominem in the morning. Yeah, I'm sure it has nothing to do with the 1:4 efficiency difference and is a conspiracy by rich people to cram "crap" down the throats of us "common", good, hard-workin' innocent folk.
The whole reason this has been legislated is that people refuse to buy compact fluorescent bulbs because they're stubborn and hate change. So they say "they give me headaches" and "they're not as bright" and so on. Even "they cost too much", after you've gone blue in the face showing them the VERY basic math that a 3rd grader could do, showing they pay themselves back within a year or two, AND practically give them away with rebates.
Please help metamoderate.
I think the kid is probably just fine. You, on the other hand, seem to have bitten a mouthful off of the batshit crazy tree.
I still have and use incandescents (reminds me...need to get some bigger ones), but its mostly for quick start and overall light quality. They don't make 95+CRI CFLs and the last 95CRI LEDs I purchased were $30/ea for 10W (50W equiv) R20s. They're good (unbelievably good at full power, actually), but they do cast an odd light at low dimming, and there's an "on" limit of about 10% of the max light output (okay, that's a guess, it might be 5, but it's a sudden-on).
Where I need lots of light, I use CFLs, where I need lots of great light I use LEDs, where I need really good dimming or instant-on-brightness-and-short-burn-time I use incand.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Because CFLs suck donkey balls for light quality*, they come on excessively slowly in cold temperatures, and they only emit 20-50% light during their warmup period (say, less than the time it takes to retrieve an item from your closet). And while the majority of the lamp will work fine for 10,000 hours, the electronics have a bad case of going toes up in less than 2000. I've replaced all 15 of the CFLs in my home office in the past 24 months. Some of them twice.
*Find me a 2700, 2800, or 3000K CFL with a CRI higher than 95 for less than 5x the cost of an incandescent and I'll take that back.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"LED bulbs are out of this world at Home Depot" Those prices are for 4- and 6-packs. Read your own search result. At between $10 and $12 for a Cree LED bulb at Home Depot, the price is right, and I'm VERY happy with equivalent light output, color temperature and performance with my Z-wave dimmers. No CFL or LED bulb so far has matched them. I've had to return one Cree bulb so far because it shipped with the glass envelope loose. Been perfect otherwise (4 bulbs installed for trial, roughly 6 months in). Full disclosure: I hold 100 shares of CREE. And this is my actual experience using the bulbs in my house.
Um, no. Find me a warranty for 50,000 hours for a reasonable cost. You'll find that most warranties don't extend past 5 years, and those that do typically have a time limit to the hours burned. Ex:
(from Home Depot)
Cree: 10 years (5 years for downlights/inverted use)
EcoSmart: 5 years
Philips: 6 years, limited to 3 hours/day (6000hours!)
Sylvania: 3 years @ 4300h/yr or 5yrs @ 2160hr/yr
Many will claim a lifetime, but will only warrant for a short period. Also realize that these warranties are limited to the life of the lighting subsidiary. For Philips and Sylvania, probably not a worry. For EcoSmart and Cree...will they even be in the residential lamp business (directly) in 5 or 10 years? Will you still even have the receipt? I point this out because I've replaced every single CFL (15) in my home office area in the past 24 months, some of them twice. The manufacturer is no longer in business, the vendor just shrugs - not their problem.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This is a beautiful example of too much government by idiots. What the city slicker politicians and neo-econazies don't understand is that the 100W bulbs are useful. I use them for the combination of heat and light they produce on our farm. They are lower power than the 250W bulbs and thus safer so they're less likely to cause a fire while still providing heat in a creep setting for baby chicks, ducklings and piglets.
In my home I all of my light bulbs are LED, because I want light. But in the sheds in the winter the heat of the incandescent bulbs is useful.
If you don't want to buy them then don't. But no need to outlaw them. The law is plain arrogance and fascism.
The warrantee is for the power supply, in case it has an early failure. The LEDs will last forever—they just get dimmer over time, and they reach the end of their lifetime when they are 70% as bright as they were when new—that's what the 50k hour figure refers to.
I was president of a condo association for 5 years. I made the costly mistake of replacing all outside incandescent lights with CFLs:
- all CFLs, regardless of brand, failed within two years. Outdoors CFLs don't last as long as the cheapest incandescents, despite all caterwauling to the contrary. Please don't tell me about your special brand: I've tried it and it failed prematurely.Please don't tell me to return them to the store under the 3-year guarantee: if I did that all my time/gas would be spent driving to/from Home Depot/Lowe's/Light Store and changing bulbs.
- CFLs were frequently stolen. This was an unanticipated cost.
LEDs are even worse: thieves can spot an LED from 100 yards away and will stop at nothing to steal them (since they're so damn expensive). Great to spend $300 replacing a weatherproof floodlight receptacle and the electrical tubing because a thief tore it off an outside wall to get a $50 LED floodlight.
After 3 years I gave up and went back to incandescents, which we will use forever. Savings due to CFLs low electrical usage are not recovered when you include failure and theft in the equation. In fact, incandescents are cheaper even when you include the cost of the rugged models.
There are good reasons why incandescents have been used for so long. And, as others note, you can heat the chicken coop, keep pipes warm, and do other useful tasks with incandescents. CFLs were a political solution to a non-problem.
Most of the energy output of an incandescent is *not* light (about only 5% is light).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb
So at present time in Montreal (-20C), my incandescent lighting is not wasting that much energy...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
The only problem with your claim about the new bulbs saving money only applies if the electric utility does not have any rate increases in the works. I live in California and Edison International already has approved rate increases for the next 20 years that completely destroys any savings from more efficient light bulbs. Because of this, I'll stick with my god damn incadescent bulbs and use energy efficient ones only where it makes sense (long run times).
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You are joking, right?
Rate increases mean that more efficient bulbs save even *more* money. Replace the 12 cents/KWh above with 20 cents/KWh and instead of saving $36 over 7 years, you save $60. If you're a high power user in PG&E territory, you're already paying 31 - 35 cents/KWh in the highest rate tier, so you'll save even more money with efficient bulbs.
And note that that savings I quoted were not for LED or CFL's, but energy efficient Halogens.
It depends on what you run on it. LEDs wouldn't require that much of a load. This isn't a server farm with racks for 1 kW servers, it's a house.
Or you could simply buy halogens.
Nice try at being a smartass, but you fail it. It's not cheaper. The lightbulb costs much more, and once you replace a lightbulb that gives off 1000 lm of light and 100W of heating with a lightbulb that gives 1000 lm of light and 5W of heating you'll have to turn up heating by 95W. Or do liberals think that this energy comes from unicorns?
No, but a lot of liberals know the laws of thermodynamics, which essentially say that chemical and thermal energy go into one bin, and electrical and mechanical energy go into another. These two bins can not be compared directly the way you did in your conservative rant.
Special bulbs were always exempt. Better incandescent are not banned, only the embarrassingly primitive ones that arguably are not light bulbs since you're lucky to get 10% light from them--- the rest is heat. It's frankly misleading to label them anything other than a heater or a resistor.
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I can buy fluorescents and LEDs to replace 40 and 60 watt bulbs, but there is still no good replacement for the 100 watt bulb. The "100 watt equivalent" fluorescents are nowhere near as bright, and are so large that they don't properly fit in some fixtures.
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Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
Halogens may be more efficient, but they are significantly hotter than incandescents, in part because the bulbs have a smaller surface area.
The drop in replacement halogens have the inner glass envelope enclosed by a standard sized glass bulb so a 72W halogen doesn't get hotter than the 100w bulb it replaces.
On average, to deliver that 95W of thermal energy to your house, about 175W of thermal energy is wasted up the cooling towers and smokestacks of the power station. This is due to the thermodynamic losses involved in converting heat energy to mechanical energy. (A few high-tech power stations are somewhat more efficient, but electricity is a fungible commodity that is freely traded, so it doesn't really help if you happen to live near one. And hydroelectric dams, which don't have these thermodynamic conversion losses, are nevertheless environmental disasters in their own right.)
In contrast, a modern gas furnace can waste as little as 5W out the vent to deliver that same 95W of thermal energy into your house.
CFL and LED lighting aren't even close to efficient enough for me. They don't put out enough heat, and cast this annoying glow that competes with the friendly cheer from the sperm oil lamps.
Why don't you just pass some more laws, and make those decisions for them? People have way too much freedom in this world.
They're not equivalent at all.
One reason the resistive heat costs 3X the gas heat is because they have to burn about 3X the amount of fuel to actually get the same amount of energy into your house via electrons. A heat pump takes advantage of thermodynamics to reverse that 3X penalty and achieve approximate parity with gas; someobdy who thinks that a light bulb is a good way to heat their house just pays the penalty. As they say, a fool and his money are soon parted.
If you want a yellow CFL or LED, you can buy one. They're labeled with color temperature nowadays; just buy the color temp you prefer. 6500K or "daylight" gives you essentially white light (which indoors often perceptually comes across as blue-ish or harsh), lower color temps give progressively more yellow colors. About 2700K or so, also marketed as "warm white" or "soft white", will give roughly the same yellowish color as an incandescent.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
In the mean time, I need to go out and get a new bulb.
Which is part of the reason why I think LEDs should be parts of fixtures, not stuffed into individual bulbs. Go with the long tube flourescent model - have a seperate power supply. While you're at it make it modular so you don't have to mess with wirenuts and such.
This also gives you an advantage because the ideal lighting patterns between incandescents and LEDs are quite different. I'd rather see a fixture designed with them in mind, especially given that with regular usage most LED bulbs would be the life of the owner/longer than most renovations. Still, make the bulbs replaceable with nothing more than a screwdriver
I don't read AC A human right
> LEDs are cheaper
Unless you're talking about outdoor light fixtures in Florida... where the atmosphere is maybe two or three steps less-corrosive than the atmosphere of Venus insofar as light bulbs with active electronics are concerned. LED and CFL bulbs in a porch light have a lifespan measured in MONTHS here.
It's not even the endless rain per se... it's the dew that condenses inside the bulb just about every night/morning. People who've never lived in South Florida just don't "get" how quickly and completely stuff here gets destroyed when it's left directly exposed to outdoor air, even in a sheltered location that doesn't get directly exposed to actual rain.
Pure physics-wise, you are correct. Heating the same volume the same amount requires the same amount of heat energy. The difference is the source of the heat energy.
A resistive heater produces the heat by consuming electrical power only, 3400 BTU/hr generated heat requires a bit over 4.2A of 220V electricity to flow through the resistive element. (specs from a Radiant Cove heater unit)
A quick intro to the refrigeration cycle can be found here https://www.swtc.edu/ag_power/air_conditioning/lecture/basic_cycle.htm.
A heat pump is the same as an air conditioner or fridge, just installed with the condensor inside the building and the evaporator outside. The primary heat source is the outside air and the only power is that needed to power the compressor unit to move the working fluid through the cycle. The smallest Fujitsu unit generates 11000 BTU/hr using 3.7A at 220V.
Basically the answer is the same amount of energy is needed for the same heating, but the heat pump uses a different source and an efficient process to produce the heat than a resistive load does.
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Even Montreal has a summer, and there are much more efficient heating methods than light bulbs even for the winter.
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There is a political and cultural phenomenon in the US known as the "limousine liberal" -- otherwise well off people supporting agendas, often environmental ones, which have a a high financial cost which is trivial to them but expensive for other people.
Examples of this include pushing hybrid cars, organic and free range foods, and apparently light bulbs, too. There are other more political examples, like higher taxes to support social welfare programs or higher gas taxes.
None of this is to suggest that these individual items aren't without sound, rational arguments, but there is a good argument to be made that people with resources want to force things with greater costs and in many cases less desirable qualities on people with fewer resources.
Part of the subtext is that the affluent also have greater political influence because of their affluence, making the debate somehow less fair. There's also an element of ideology, as elements of the rational arguments in favor of these proposals aren't always grounded in a completely sound scientific basis or have contradictions (like the heavy metals in CFLs).
As for lighting, I've been a big user of CFLs and have found them frustrating and with weird reliability. Strangely, I get great life out of them in outdoor fixtures where CFLs aren't supposed to work well, at least in the Minnesota climate. Indoors they have been less reliable, to the point where I pick "reduced wattage" halogen-type bulbs (current favorite: Philips Halogena) in recessed can fixtures. I live in an older house with a lot of older built-in fixtures and my principal motivation has been less about environmentalism than getting more lumens out of fixtures only rated for 60w bulbs by using 75 and 100w equivalent CFLs.
I bought an LED at Costco on a lark and have been pretty impressed with it, although I don't see many bulbs with lumen ratings matching 75w and or 100w bulbs. That, cost and my history with CFLs has led me to be pretty unwilling to dive into LEDs.
I happen to work in the utility industry. Power for lighting both commercial and residential is low single-digit percentage. (Incidentally this is also why daylight saving time is a colossal mistake.)
The incandescent lightbulb ban is just a show. It's political theater. There are dozens of ways to save more power with more bang for the buck.
Heat pumps have one serious problem. When it gets cold, your house needs more heat and the amount of heat that a heat pump can deliver goes down. Almost every heat pump installation uses resistive auxiallary heat to make up the diffrerence. You are usually better off using a little extra heat from either a small electric space heater or light bulbs in the rooms you occupy to bring them to a comfortable temperature than using the heat pump to heat the entire house to a constant temperuture.