In 211 days, on Jan. 1, 2012, Congress won’t let us buy traditional 100-watt light bulbs anymore. The reason is to save energy, because incandescents burn more electricity than newer bulbs. But President Obama wants a million electric cars on the road by 2015, which will use more electricity than we save from light bulbs. Go figure.
Traditional incandescent light bulbs are being phased out over two years. The demise of the 100-watt bulb will come first, followed by 75-watt bulbs in January 2013, and 60- and 40-watt bulbs in January 2014.
President George W. Bush signed the light bulb ban — the brainchild of Reps. Jane Harman, D-Calif., and Fred Upton, R-Mich, — into law in 2007 as part of the Energy Independence and Security Act.
Upton is now chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. While lobbying among Republicans for the position following their November 2010 election victory, he promised to seek repeal of the ban.
“We have heard the grass roots loud and clear, and will have a hearing early next Congress,” he said last December. “The last thing we wanted to do was infringe upon personal liberties — and this has been a good lesson that Congress does not always know best.”
Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, proposed a bill to save incandescent light bulbs in January. Barton’s measure has 62 co-sponsors, including 61 Republicans and one Democrat. A companion bill with 28 backers in the Senate is sponsored by Sen. Michael Enzi, R-Wyo.
The bills have not yet been considered in committee.
Charlotte Baker, Upton’s press secretary, said the committee will convene a hearing on lighting efficiency standards in June, but she would not say whether Barton’s bill will be included.
Without traditional light bulbs, Americans will choose among compact fluorescent bulbs, halogens and light-emitting diodes. Conventional 100-watt bulbs cost around 58 cents, compared with $2 for a CFL and $8.50 for a halogen.
Consumers complain that the light cast by CFLs has a yellow or blue tint, that it flickers and causes headaches, that the bulbs hum, and that they take at least five minutes to reach full brightness.
In addition, CFLs contain mercury, and the Energy Department has promulgated complex rules for their disposal.
Those instructions include leaving a room for 15 minutes and turning off forced air heating and cooling. Broken CFLs shouldn’t be swept up with brooms or vacuum cleaners, but scooped up using stiff paper and placed in canning jars or sealed plastic bags. Afterward, the last fragments should be collected with sticky tape or wet wipes.
This isn’t something people want to do when they break bulbs. They just want to sweep them up, throw them in the trash and get on with their day.
When CFLs stop working, they cannot be placed in the garbage, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. They must be turned in at special recycling centers.
Whereas incandescent bulbs are made in America in plants such as Osram Sylvania’s Kentucky facility, Philips, Osram Sylvania and General Electric have always made the vast majority of CFLs in China. Twisting the glass into a CFL’s spiral shape is highly labor-intensive.
One American plant capable of producing CFLs, Neptun, opened in Lake Bluff, Ill., with funding from the stimulus program, but that is the exception rather than the rule. Additional CFL plants are unlikely to open in America because of high labor costs.
Consumers should be free to choose the light bulbs they prefer. If Congress believes consumers should conserve energy, it can impose a tax on certain light bulb models, or on electricity in general.
Americans start to lose incandescent bulbs in 211 days. If Congress were enlightened, it would repeal this dim law.
Examiner Columnist Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
