By Simon Leufstedt, published on January 29th, 2008
The USA recently passed its energy bill for 2008. The new energy bill has a section where it’s states that incandescent light bulbs will be banned for traditional use. The ban will begin in 2012 and, as planned, be fully in power by 2014.
The energy wasting light bulbs will be replaced with either CFLs or LEDs.
According to the US congress the incandescent light bulb ban will save around $40 billion and USA would need about 14 fewer coal-fired power plants, thus reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50 million tons.
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5 Comments
February 4th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Moving away from incandescents is the correct course of action, but the replacement technologies need to improve before people are forced to switch over. LEDs are good for traffic lights, but they don’t emit enough usable light to be functional. CFLs are better, but they take too long to get going and I don’t think there is a dimmable one out there that works.
February 4th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Actually LEDs are now being made that can retrofit into existing light sockets. You’re right about the older technology being too dim (except for maybe a reading or nightlight) but the newer ones use different dies that have much more powerful diodes. This HP-10 Eternaleds LED Spotlight for example has the same light output as a 100W incandescent. And it only uses 10 watts!
CFLs are only about 1/2 as efficient as LEDs(still much better than incandescents though), but they do have a bunch of drawbacks like you mentioned. In addition to the fact that they’re not supposed to be switched on and off constantly (greatly reduces its life) and contains mercury which is toxic to people and the environment.
February 7th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Actually there are dimmable CFLs already. They cost about £10 as opposed to the latest low prices I have seen of 49p each for standard CFLs. I use LED screw-in replacement bulbs in many places in the house. The light is white so in places where it annoys me I spray painted yellow over a few of the LEDs and now have a light similar to incandescent in colour. I understand normal spectrun LEDs are on the horizon so I won’t even have to do that soon. If you go on eBay and look hard you can buy LED bulbs from Hong Kong in bulk at very competitive prices and they should last 100,000 hours at only 2-3 watts each!
February 17th, 2008 at 1:53 am
To what energy bill are you referring? While Australia has worked out a ban on incandescents, this is NOT TRUE for the U.S.. A couple of states have bills that propose a ban, but none have passed. Might be good to post source information for a claims like this.
February 17th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
@ bruno: You can find one of the sources here.
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