You may have noticed that 100-watt incandescent light bulbs are vanishing from store shelves. That's because the federal government banned their manufacture as of Jan. 1.
They're too energy inefficient. Most of the energy they use is from heat, not light (sort of like a political campaign, eh?).
By the way, you can still find them online, but once the current inventories are gone. They're gone.
That's not all. Other incandescent light bulb wattages will be vanishing soon enough: Starting in January, 75-watt bulbs will be banned; 60-watt and 40-watt bulbs fade to black at the start of 2014.
That doesn't mean you won't be able to get your bright lights on. You've been able to get the fluorescent bulbs for awhile, but some people don't much like the quality of the light.
Manufacturers are coming out with LED lights now that produce whiter, brighter lights at a fraction of the wattage. This Associated Press report run by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes that the light-emitting diode lights "don't contain any volatile, hazardous substances (like fluorescent bulbs) and are durable. They also last longer.
"Osram Sylvania, a division of Germany's Siemens AG, said that it's shipping the first batches of its Ultra LED bulb to some Lowe's stores. The bulb uses 20 watts of electricity and costs $50."
I actually have a first-generation fluorescent bulb in one of my lamps that I've had for at least two decades. It was worth the prince's ransom I paid for it at the time.
How about it? Are you OK with the new, more efficient light bulbs—bulbs that convert more energy into light instead of heat? And would you be OK spending a few extra bucks on a bulb if you only had to replace it every few years, instead of every few months?
Thanks to the Republicans 'no new taxes' mentality, mixed with the Democrats 'lets regulate it' mentality, we have this cluster of an idea. Should have put a $50 tax on them and let Siemens figure out how to make their bulbs cheaper than the 'competition'. The market would work it out. Instead we don't get a tax that represents the true cost (energy inefficiency/environmental) now do we get a working market/economy for the LED bulbs. The worst of both. Thanks, Congress. Both sides of the aisle failed the country on this one.
And LEDs pollute less: 451 pounds of CO2 emissions per year for LED, 4500 pounds/year for incandescent, and 1051 pounds/year for CFL. That's coal that's doesn't need to be mined, hauled, stored or burned. Each of those activities pollutes. Black lung, mountain-top removal mining, coal slurry spills, toxic emissions -- are you willing to save some money to reduce them?
See the attached chart re bulb lifecycle, comparative energy costs, etc. LED is a win any way you cut it.
"Under the pressures of globalization, the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States has been shrinking for decades, from 19.5 million in 1979 to 11.6 million this year, a decline of 40 percent." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/07/AR2010090706933.html
A huge reason is that WE don't pay for China's pollution, poor working conditions, and other externalities. Import duties can fix that, but we don't set them high enough and we don't enforce them. Maybe we agree on that? If not, what's your plan to bring manufacturing back home?
Once production ramps up, you should see the price drop for both. When this happens, the question will change from "if you can afford" to "can you afford not to switch".
Or we could institute real tariffs and force our trading partners to treat their workers well, deal properly with waste disposal and pollution, and in general be held to the same high standard we hold ourselves to.
I don't believe that, but if you do, it's just because we let it happen. Easy enough to fix, esp. with modern technology and the will to do it. How do you prevent foreign companies (/governments) from dumping products here at below their cost? That's where a race to the bottom leads. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/28/business/energy-environment/us-raises-tariffs-on-chinese-wind-turbine-makers.html
Thanks for the chart Missourian.