America is getting rid of a ban that was placed on energy-inefficient bulbs. While countries worldwide have been phasing out incandescent bulbs because they waste energy by making heat. The Trump administration has issued a rule that will prolong the life of these old-fashioned, energy-intensive light bulbs invented by Thomas Edison 140 years ago. If not for this rollback on yet another Obama-era regulation, those old bulbs would have been effectively phased out by January 1, 2020.
If the ban remained, the sale of bulbs that do not reach a standard of efficiency would not have been allowed. It would have eventually led to the end of incandescent bulbs and an end to unnecessarily higher electricity costs. But that’s not the way the US Energy Department sees it. They say banning incandescent bulbs would be bad for consumers because of the higher cost of more efficient bulbs.
Jason Hartke, president of the Alliance to Save Energy, said in a statement:
The Energy Department flat out got it wrong today. Instead of moving us forward, this rule will keep more energy-wasting bulbs on store shelves and saddle the average American household with about $100 in unnecessary energy costs every year.
Meanwhile, allowing consumers to buy and use these light bulbs will mean $14 billion a year in higher energy costs as well as an increase in the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study by the Appliance Standards Awareness Project and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. The amount of energy that is going to be required just to power wasteful bulbs is equivalent to the electricity produced by 25 coal power plants, says Hartke.
The Department of Energy says they’ve rolled back on the ban because it was a misinterpretation of the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. The reality is, the government has come under pressure from manufacturers and it gave in.
Appliance Standards Awareness Project executive director Andrew deLaski told The Washington Post:
It makes zero sense to eliminate energy-saving light bulb standards that will save households money on electricity bills and cut climate change emissions. Instead, the Trump administration is siding with manufacturers that want to keep selling outdated, energy-wasting light bulbs.
This move to allow the use of inefficient products will contribute to greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming. There is evidence everywhere of the dangers of global warming from catastrophic weather events becoming more frequent to arctic ice melting – including Greenland’s Sermilik glacier, which has thinned by 100m (329ft) in 15 years. Now more than ever before governments should be implementing supportive requirements for good decisions to be made, not the other way around.
