Lawmakers Move to Ban Incandescents

July 12, 2007
The general-purpose tungsten-incandescent lamp now finds himself unwelcome in polite society — banished from one country and at risk of banishment from several states in his homeland, if not from the nation as a whole. From Australia to Canada, from the European Union to the United States, public opinion, to the extent it’s expressed through legislation, appears to have reached a tipping point.

After a brilliant career spanning more than a century, in which he came to be a fixture in households throughout the electrified world and a universal icon for good ideas, the general-purpose tungsten-incandescent lamp now finds himself unwelcome in polite society — banished from one country and at risk of banishment from several states in his homeland, if not from the nation as a whole. From Australia to Canada, from the European Union to the United States, public opinion, to the extent it’s expressed through legislation, appears to have reached a tipping point.

Many in the electrical industry may wonder why it’s taken so long for the rest of the world to realize that the tungsten incandescent makes a better space heater than a light source. In contrast, the compact fluorescent lamp (CFL), the leading candidate to replace general-purpose incandescents in the short term, runs cool, uses a fourth the energy and lasts eight- to ten-times longer.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that replacing the nation’s billions of incandescents with equivalent compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) will reduce annual electricity costs in the U.S. by $18 billion, in the process eliminating the need for 80 coal-fired power plants and reducing fossil fuel emissions by approximately 159 million tons per year. Switching some of that lighting to solid-state lamps such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) would cut energy consumption even further.

The world’s leading lamp manufacturers are unlikely to shed many tears over the incandescent lamp’s demise. For many years, General Electric, Osram/Sylvania and Philips have been investing heavily in development of more efficient lighting technologies and in marketing to drive demand toward those products. Now that governments are stepping in to push the market, the manufacturers are working through industry associations and lobbyists to help shape the laws in such a way that they encourage energy efficiency without stifling innovation.

What all this means for the electrical supply chain is yet to be seen. General-use incandescents are not exactly a leading profit center for most distributors. The commercial, industrial and institutional markets that are most distributors’ primary focus moved to fluorescent lighting long ago. Distributors with a lighting specialty, in fact, are busy swapping out old fluorescent technology for the latest, most efficient lamps and fixtures and still showing customers nice returns on the investment. Residential new construction markets may see some changes in the kinds of fixtures installed, but due to the size of the existing installed base, any new lighting technologies will have to be compatible with Edison screw-based sockets for a long time to come.

The (multi-)million-dollar questions that remain are: What kind of lighting will U.S. consumers ultimately favor, if denied their supply of low-cost incandescent bulbs? And what will happen to availability of CFLs and other replacement lamps, if the laws produce a sudden surge in demand?

The answer to the first question will be influenced by the details of the laws that are eventally passed regarding energy-efficient lighting. This is a work in progress.

At press time, the U.S. Senate had passed an energy bill, H.R. 6, “The Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection, and Energy Efficiency Act of 2007.” That bill — in addition to a host of provisions to encourage research and production in renewable fuels, raise federal automotive mileage standards, refine some of the energy-efficiency specifics of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT) and make price gouging on fuels a federal crime — includes lighting efficiency standards that in effect eliminate 100W and 75W general-purpose incandescent lamps. An equivalent bill (one of several, actually) in the House of Representatives has emerged from the House Energy & Commerce Committee and is awaiting a debate before the full house.

Both bills include language declaring that the federal law will supercede state laws, throwing bills under consideration in California, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and several other states into doubt. Federal pre-emption is an important issue for manufacturers, who want to avoid the patchwork effect of having their products legal in some states and outlawed in others.

Various entities in the electrical industry, including the manufacturers, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), Rosslyn, Va., have been negotiating with environmental groups and educating legislators, trying to shape the direction of the bills now making their way through Congress. One of the highest priorities is to make sure the bills set achievable efficiency performance standards for lamps while remaining “technology-neutral.”

Banning incandescent lamps or any particular technology outright would stifle innovation, argue the manufacturers. Establishing minimum performance standards would move the market toward the more efficient products while allowing manufacturers to continue trying to make existing technologies more efficient as well.

GE Consumer & Industrial, which includes the company’s Nela Park, Ohio-based lighting business, has a significant stake in this language. Shortly after the California bill was introduced, GE announced that it is developing an incandescent technology that promises to rival CFLs in energy efficiency while preserving the warmth and point-source sparkle of traditional incandescent lamps.

Despite the efforts of lamp companies and their allies, the House bill, as ammended in committee, specifically bans production, importing and sale of 100W and 75W general-purpose incandescents. Whether this language survives the long road ahead through House debate and reconciliation with the Senate legislation — and whether the bill survives a possible Presidential veto (said to be likely if it raises vehicle mileage standards too aggressively or includes the price-gouging language) — remains to be seen. “Right now, we’re keeping our powder dry to fight that fight in conference,” says one source involved in the lobbying.

Exerpted from a story to appear in the July 2007 issue of Electrical Wholesaling.