A bill to ban energy-hogging incandescent light bulbs in California cleared its first legislative hurdle Monday. The California Assembly’s Utilities and Commerce Committee voted 7-2 to approve the legislation (AB 722) sponsored by Van Nuys Democrat Lloyd Levine. The bill would prohibit the sale of 25 watt to 150 watt traditional light bulbs beginning in 2012. While the bill doesn’t prescribe what should replace the bulbs, its backers hope people will switch to compact fluorescent lighting, which uses 70 percent less electricity than incandescents, and that consumer demand will lower the cost of LED lighting. A legislative analyst estimates that a bulb ban would reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California by 1.82 million metric tons. Light bulb manufacturers like General Electric (GE) oppose an outright bulb and favor setting energy efficiency standards. Philips (PHG), however, is backing efforts to phase out incandescents. The bulb bill goes to the Appropriations Committee next and then to the full Assembly.
California Light Bulb Ban Chances Look Brighter
April 24, 2007 by Todd Woody
Green Wombat 
GE’s position seems more rational than an out right ban. We do not ban automobiles, rather regulations require them to achieve a specified level of efficiency. Why not apply the same concept to light sources?
Has anyone considered the problem that compact florescent bulbs may represent with their mercury vapor content that will pose recycling issues in the future?
I think LED light bulbs will be the norm by 2012. That should eliminate the CF issue. Just look at how the flashlight industry has been transformed.
It would be great if LED bulbs were standard, but if not I think it would be possible to deal with these CFL’s in a manner similar to soft-drink cans.
You figure out how much the harm from the mercury in unreturned bulbs is worth and then you allow people to return their spent bulbs for a refund of that amount. If no amount can be found easily enough, just make it $1 per bulb (or something high enough), and most people would certainly return them at the end, if you put the bins at places like grocery stores and post office.
Boy scouts, churches, schools, and other organizations could encourage their members to donate the spent bulbs to them on an ongoing basis, if the amount was high.
This also serves to point out that energy efficiency and trying to prevent climate change will require slight lifestyle changes if it is to be effective to any degree. Giving your kid a light bulb to bring into school every once in a while isn’t going to place that large of a burden on you or him, it’s just something to get used to.
Will it be possible to scale up production of new bulbs by 2012 without increasing the cost in the short term?
The more light bulbs you make, the cheaper they get.
Personally, I agree with almost everyone who posts here recently. I think most ideas are rational. But ultimately a combination of all the ideas would work best.
First, the future is LED, period. How we get there makes more sense if we ease in using regulations. Transitioning to CFL’s is a good idea, but problematic because of they contain mercury-phosphorus etc. To make/insure people re-cycle you would seriously need a refund value of at least $2.oo or most wont waste their time, that’s just reality.
We did not think hard enough to get to where we are, in a climatological mess, but we are going to have to stop relying on government to do what’s right, we need to be pro-active.
My company is developing LED lighting, that’s our way of contributing. It has not been easy, but it will hopefully make a difference before it’s too late.
Even though I’m a staunch proponent of alternative bulbs, I strongly disagree with an outright ban on incandescents.
For one, CF bulbs that I’ve purchased just don’t have the right light spectrum (yet). Flicker is still an issue too as far as I know. I tend to use CF bulbs in hallways, closets, garage, attic, utility room, etc… and a mix of other types in large rooms. This provides a good cross spectrum of light.
In addition, the longetivity of the bulbs has been random for me. I have bulbs that have lasted for several years and some that go out within weeks. Brand and wattage seems immaterial in this regard.
Finally, CF bulbs are not applicable in all cases. Dimmable bulbs don’t seem to be available to me any more, and this is a severe drawback for me. Also, the new ceiling fans I just bought only use halogen bulbs– what’s to be their fate?
It would sure be nice if ban proponents thought this issue through more…
While I support efforts to encourage energy effeciecy I don’t agree with a full blown ban. I think a potential approach might be to impose a declining excise tax on the traditional bulbs. Put them at cost parity with the new ones. Then over time the tax wears out forcing new technologies to continue to become more effecient and continue to compete. If people really want the old ones, they can have them at a slightly higher price.
Another moronic idea from the whacko environmentalist that totally goes against what they should stand for. geeez, and what a informative article (not).
The CFL mercury nightmare
Steven Milloy, Financial Post
Published: Saturday, April 28, 2007
How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labour — unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$2,004.28, which doesn’t include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health.
Sound crazy? Perhaps no more than the stampede to ban the incandescent light bulb in favour of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).
According to an April 12 article in The Ellsworth American, Bridges had the misfortune of breaking a CFL during installation in her daughter’s bedroom: It dropped and shattered on the carpeted floor.
Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.
The DEP sent a specialist to Bridges’ house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state’s “safe” level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter. The DEP specialist recommended that Bridges call an environmental cleanup firm, which reportedly gave her a “low-ball” estimate of US$2,000 to clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and Bridges began “gathering finances” to pay for the US$2,000 cleaning. Reportedly, her insurance company wouldn’t cover the cleanup costs because mercury is a pollutant.
Given that the replacement of incandescent bulbs with CFLs in the average U.S. household is touted as saving as much as US$180 annually in energy costs — and assuming that Bridges doesn’t break any more CFLs — it will take her more than 11 years to recoup the cleanup costs in the form of energy savings.
The potentially hazardous CFL is being pushed by companies such as Wal-Mart, which wants to sell 100 million CFLs at five times the cost of incandescent bulbs during 2007, and, surprisingly, environmentalists.
It’s quite odd that environmentalists have embraced the CFL, which cannot now and will not in the foreseeable future be made without mercury. Given that there are about five billion light bulb sockets in North American households, we’re looking at the possibility of creating billions of hazardous waste sites such as the Bridges’ bedroom.
Usually, environmentalists want hazardous materials out of, not in, our homes. These are the same people who go berserk at the thought of mercury being emitted from power plants and the presence of mercury in seafood. Environmentalists have whipped up so much fear of mercury among the public that many local governments have even launched mercury thermometer exchange programs.
As the activist group Environmental Defense urges us to buy CFLs, it defines mercury on a separate part of its Web site as a “highly toxic heavy metal that can cause brain damage and learning disabilities in fetuses and children” and as “one of the most poisonous forms of pollution.”
Greenpeace also recommends CFLs while simultaneously bemoaning contamination caused by a mercury-thermometer factory in India. But where are mercury-containing CFLs made? Not in the United States, under strict environmental regulation. CFLs are made in India and China, where environmental standards are virtually non-existent.
And let’s not forget about the regulatory nightmare in the U.S. known as the Superfund law, the EPA regulatory program best known for requiring expensive but often needless cleanup of toxic waste sites, along with endless litigation over such cleanups.
We’ll eventually be disposing billions and billions of CFL mercury bombs. Much of the mercury from discarded and/or broken CFLs is bound to make its way into the environment and give rise to Superfund liability, which in the past has needlessly disrupted many lives, cost tens of billions of dollars and sent many businesses into bankruptcy.
As each CFL contains five milligrams of mercury, at the Maine “safety” standard of 300 nanograms per cubic meter, it would take 16,667 cubic meters of soil to “safely” contain all the mercury in a single CFL. While CFL vendors and environmentalists tout the energy cost savings of CFLs, they conveniently omit the personal and societal costs of CFL disposal.
Not only are CFLs much more expensive than incandescent bulbs and emit light that many regard as inferior to incandescent bulbs, they pose a nightmare if they break and require special disposal procedures. Yet governments (egged on by environmentalists and the Wal-Marts of the world) are imposing on us such higher costs, denial of lighting choice, disposal hassles and breakage risks in the name of saving a few dollars every year on the electric bill? – Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com. He is a junk-science expert and advocate of free enterprise, and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
We have been using hundreds of these compact fluorescent light bulbs and find them to be just fine. We get them from: http://www.interlight.biz
Seems like a carrot would be better than a stick. How about tax credits for purchasing CF lights. Or financing them through your electric provider, such that the lower cost of electricity offsets the initial cost. I know that if it becomes law someone somewhere paid big money for it, and consumers were duped again.