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Trump Administration Dims Rule On Energy Efficient Lightbulbs (npr.org)
An anonymous reader shares a report: If it's been a few years since you shopped for a lightbulb, you might find yourself confused. Those controversial curly-cue ones that were cutting edge not that long ago? Gone. (Or harder to find.) Thanks to a 2007 law signed by President George W. Bush, shelves these days are largely stocked with LED bulbs that look more like the traditional pear-shaped incandescent version but use just one-fifth the energy. A second wave of lightbulb changes was set to happen. But now the Trump administration wants to undo an Obama-era regulation designed to make a wide array of specialty lightbulbs more energy efficient.
At issue here are bulbs such as decorative globes used in bathrooms, reflectors in recessed lighting, candle-shaped lights and three-way lightbulbs. The Natural Resources Defense Council says that, collectively, these account for about 2.7 billion light sockets, nearly half the conventional sockets in use in the U.S. At the very end of the Obama administration, the Department of Energy decided these specialty bulbs should also be subject to efficiency requirements under the 2007 law. The lighting industry objected and sued to overturn the decision. [...] NEMA argued that Congress never intended for the law to apply to all these other lightbulbs. After President Trump took office the Energy Department agreed and proposed to reverse the agency's previous decision. Critics say if the reversal is finalized it will mean higher energy bills for consumers and more pollution.
At issue here are bulbs such as decorative globes used in bathrooms, reflectors in recessed lighting, candle-shaped lights and three-way lightbulbs. The Natural Resources Defense Council says that, collectively, these account for about 2.7 billion light sockets, nearly half the conventional sockets in use in the U.S. At the very end of the Obama administration, the Department of Energy decided these specialty bulbs should also be subject to efficiency requirements under the 2007 law. The lighting industry objected and sued to overturn the decision. [...] NEMA argued that Congress never intended for the law to apply to all these other lightbulbs. After President Trump took office the Energy Department agreed and proposed to reverse the agency's previous decision. Critics say if the reversal is finalized it will mean higher energy bills for consumers and more pollution.
Am I wrong to consider energy efficiency problem with light bulbs largely solved? LED bulb are affordable and efficient. Is there anything else left to do?
However, modern LED bulbs are not as reliable as an early models. I have very first Phillips LED bulb that was sold, it cost almost 80$ when it was new and it still works. About a year ago I purchased 20$ LED bulb and noticed it already intermittently fails to light. Such lack of reliability is a significant e-waste issue.
...it has nothing to do with the benefit to either the consumer or the industry and is totally about trying to erase anything Obama did as a way of getting his petty revenge.
Now we're going to have to generate about 25 large coal-burning power plants' worth of extra electricity if this rollback goes through
They assume everybody is going to remove the LED lights, and replace them with incandescents ?
I've converted nearly all my house to LED, including most of the decorative lights. They look a bit tacky when they're not turned on, but you can't really tell the difference when they're turned on. I bought a whole boatload of LED lights from Walmart when they were like something like $2 for a 4 pack of 60 watt equivalents, and replaced every normal light in my home. The net result so far is to lower my energy bill from $121 to $104 a month.
CFL light bulbs sucked in every way imaginable. Not only were they bad for outdoor use (slow to light up), I never had one that lived up to its supposed 7 year lifespan. Then you had to package them up and bring them to a store to dispose of them. I wonder how many of those are lying busted in landfills across the country, leaking mercury into the water table?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Many specialty bulbs are very odd shapes. CFL and LED lights are difficult to fit into these shapes, and end up being highly unreliable. For what the special nature of these bulbs, the conventional style works more reliably.
Why is legislation defined as automatically meaning higher energy bills and more pollution? Aren't people free to buy the bulbs they want to buy? I have a whole bunch of candle-type LED bulbs; they're already on the market. I chose to buy them because of the energy savings of using them. Presumably, many more people will do the same. Regulation had nothing to do with my purchasing them.
Why should anybody care about what the government says about this when you can already make the choice yourself? Regulations don't "make a wide array of specialty light bulbs more efficient," the people who invented the specialty light bulbs do. Regulations just force people to do stuff (or not to do stuff).
My whole house has been LED for years. I've had zero issues and only had to replace 1 bulb. That issue wasn't that the LED failed, but the smart components failed and I coudn't use the app to control it. My house is fairly large for this area and the power company sends us averages every month. I'm always well under the power usage of houses in my area. I don't see any issues with quality of light as they now sell LED bulbs in different spectrums or even with adjustable spectrum. The cost is nominal you can get 24 60W equivalent bulbs now for $22.
This legislation was a good thing. It pushed manufactures to find a way to lower costs on LED bulbs and brought lower consumption of electrical use. Why change it?
...to stop these people?
I honestly have no idea who you mean by "these people".
Do you mean:
1. Obamatards who imposed silly rules?
2. Trumptards who don't care about pollution?
3. Stupid consumers incapable of understand long vs short term costs?
4. Greedy light bulb companies wanting short-lifetime bulbs?
5. Slashdot editors who post silly articles?
6. Frist-posters?
Please clarify.
(And just in case you miss it, I'm being sarcastic.. )
And an idiot, just in case you missed it.
That's it? A personal insult is all you got to argue with here?
There is one thing that being an electrical engineer has helped me with is seeing the absolute hogwash that gets said about electricity production in terms of "green" energy or "zero emissions" for your electric cars. The truth of industrial scale electrical energy production is that it's a dirty business no matter how you do it. If you think you are saving the planet by driving one, you are at best misinformed or at worst actively lying about how things really work.
IMHO, if you want to do the least amount of emitting when you drive, you need to remember that nearly 70% of domestic electrical energy production in the USA comes from fossil fuels, including the energy you used to charge that battery. Somehow I wonder if we'd be better off burning Natural Gas in internal combustion engines over burning it to charge my EV's battery given transmission losses, conversion losses and charge/discharge efficiency and losses you have to over come... But hey, your mileage may vary (literally) but I'm pretty sure there is no such thing as a "zero" emission vehicle especially if you look at the whole life cycle of the car... Those are the facts I'm armed with, and why I'm being sarcastic...
But all you are armed with is personal insults.. I guess you don't have anything else then...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Voting
Which after this week and the fall out of the Mueller report and the spectacular flameout of AOC's "Green" new deal in the Senate soon to come is looking to be a pretty tall hill to climb.
Don't be too sure. Trump just put health care in play. I doubt he'll get votes by withdrawing protection for pre-existing conditions.
And although Trump may have been left unscathed by Mueller's probe, he is still facing lots of other legal issues.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
It isn't clear Trump is left unscathed by Mueller. We don't see the full report.
Put yourself in Mueller's shoes. If he issued an indictment of Trump, the right-wing nuts would froth at the mouth...well, more so than they already do. And his boss has already declared Presidents are above the law. So by failing to issue an indictment in the way he did, i.e., evidence on both sides, he makes Barr decide not to indict and now Barr has to defend being a toadie...my apologies to toads.
And Mueller seemed to do a fair job of spawning off other investigations that were not in his direct purview. So now Barr has to contend with the rank and file knowing what a sleeze Trump is and attempt to bottle up those investigations.
In my opinion, Barr got the job because the Republicans needed a patsy and he was pleasured to oblige.
the light from LED bulbs seems more harsh
I personally find "daylight" bulbs very harsh, and I'm wondering if you got one of those. They are slightly brighter than "warm" bulbs but I don't like the color.
Ironically we say "warm" bulbs for bulbs with a lower color temperature. Color temperature is measured using the number of degrees that an ideal black-body radiator would be to glow at that color. "warm" bulbs are 2700K, and "daylight" bulbs are 5000K. The hotter color temperature means the light is shifted toward blue, so it's brighter. The "warm" temperature is less bluish. (We are used to fire being considered warm, and it's only red-hot; blue-hot is hotter. But ice looks bluish so I guess we think bluish colors are cooler.)
I have Cree brand tube bulbs that replace fluorescent tubes and they are 3000K color temperature. I like 3000K; the "warm" temperature of 2700K seems kind of yellowish to me. I found that Cree has some 3000K bulbs on the Home Depot web site (I've never seen them in a store) and I plan to try buying some.
Also, bulbs have a metric called "CRI", which I believe is "Color Rendering Index". A CRI rating of 100 is theoretically exactly as nice as sunlight. Higher is better. The most expensive Cree bulbs have CRI of over 90. Your "harsh" bulb may have a low CRI.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
And although Trump may have been left unscathed by Mueller's probe
All we've seen so far is a summary written by the guy who literally covered up Iran-Contra. And even that summary explicitly states the report did not exonerate Trump:
While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him
Btw, one of Barr's "interesting" legal positions is that you can not be charged with obstructing justice unless you can be charged with the crime you obstructed justice to hide. Which would seem to fit extremely well with that quote. It's also an insane opinion that isn't backed by anything other than convenience to the powerful.
Yes, I agree with all of that, and have made similar points in other stories. Please see my reply to gtall above.
Barr's claim that there was no obstruction because there was no crime of conspiracy is ridiculous. Tell that to Martha Stewart, who was not convicted for insider trading, but was convicted for obstructing the investigation of her alleged insider trading.
And it gets better with Barr. He maintains that the President cannot obstruct justice. Not hard to see how he got the nod from the WH to be the new AG.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
or the Dollar store effect. It makes economic sense to buy LEDs. They save a large amount of money over a year or two. But if you're poor you can't necessarily afford a $10 or even $5 dollar light bulb when a .99 cent one will do. If you've only got $1 dollar in your pocket it doesn't matter how much the $5 bulb saves you. And for the really poor (especially the elderly) we often subsidize their electricity; and regardless you can make payment arrangements when you come up short.
The solution to this used to be subsidizing CFLs. You'd see them for $1 a piece at Goodwill when they sold for $3-$5 in other stores. We never really did that with LEDs, and we probably should. The savings are worthwhile, since it eases the load on the grid and reduces the number of new plants that need building, but folks don't like subsidies even if they save money.
Hell, we just did a massive number of cuts to WIC and food stamps that will eventually result in kids with brain damage from the malnutrition their mothers experience and, in turn, those kids will clog up the legal system with expensive crimes when they can't make sense of the world.
But hey, socialisms, amiright?
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It's pretty horrifying how many people are so deep into TDS, that they are willing to say "we should go back several centuries on progress on judicial system and adopt presumption of guilt", just to avoid having to face being wrong for two years.
This argument might be persuasive if Trump hadn't just seized the power of the purse from Congress.
Wow, your analysis is so insightful!
President Trump is only doing what Congress said he could - re-allocate certain funds for a declared emergency
So far $1BN has been re-assigned, out of a $3.5TN budget - that's hardly seizing "the power of the purse from Congress."
Ken
I am a EE graduate turned computer programmer in the 25+ years of my professional career. I've worked in many industries like the arts (theater lights and sound), aviation, telecommunications, defense and held all sorts of positions and title from trainee to Principle Engineer, from junior developer to Development Manager. I've done a lot of related stuff because I have a "I'll try" attitude and the ability to work independently or in groups. I get stuff done, on time, within budget and I don't require a lot of management, just give me the task and it gets done. I don't recall ever claiming I had professional experience with stuff when I don't, but after almost 40 years of working for a living I've done a large number of things and have a wide range of experience as a result so I can see if you somehow don't think it's possible. Maybe for you it won't be, but I've been at this earning a living thing for a long time and I don't really mind what job I'm given, so I've done a lot of things over the years.
I suppose to some young skull full of mush who's just starting out the old man with grey hair seems kind of useless. I sit over here, flying my desk and I'm sure it seems to you that I don't know any of the new things, the important things to you. You've just graduated from college and finished your 16 years of schooling with all the pomp and circumstance ringing in your ears. But truth be told, you know enough to be dangerous and still haven't learned enough to know what you don't know. I've been doing this job (or ones like it) for twice as long as you've been alive. I see you for who you are, because I was once just like you, except that I understood that I had a lot to learn and the old guys with grey hair had a lot to teach me if I'd listen to them. Maybe it was how I was raised, in a poor farm family, struggling to stay fed and warm, seeing college and hard work as a way to a better life? Maybe it's my willingness to try all sorts of jobs, to do the dirty work that nobody else wants that gave me the wide breadth of experience I have... Maybe I'm just one of the lucky ones...
However, for you, I'd suggest you grow up some. Put some time in your profession. Listen more than you speak. You have a lot to learn.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101