Re: Biden admin moving forward with light bulb bans in coming weeks

On 27 Feb 2022, PaxPerPoten <[email protected]> posted some
news:[email protected]: 

> The country is falling apart and Biden bans lightbulbs.

The Biden administration is preparing to implement a sweeping nationwide 
ban on commonly used light bulbs as part of its energy efficiency and 
climate agenda.

The regulations, which prohibit retailers from selling incandescent light 
bulbs, were finalized by the Department of Energy (DOE) in April 2022 and 
are slated to go into effect on Aug. 1, 2023. The DOE will begin full 
enforcement of the ban on that date, but it has already urged retailers to 
begin transitioning away from the light bulb type and, in recent months, 
begun issuing warning notices to companies.

"The lighting industry is already embracing more energy efficient 
products, and this measure will accelerate progress to deliver the best 
products to American consumers and build a better and brighter future," 
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said last year.

According to the DOE announcement, the regulations will save consumers an 
estimated $3 billion per year on utility bills and cut carbon emissions by 
222 million metric tons over the next three decades.

BIDEN ADMIN CRACKS DOWN ON AIR CONDITIONERS AS WAR ON APPLIANCES CONTINUES

Under the rules, incandescent and similar halogen light bulbs will be 
prohibited in favor of light-emitting diode, or LED, alternatives. While 
U.S. households have increasingly switched to LED light bulbs since 2015, 
fewer than half of households reported using mostly or exclusively LEDs, 
according to the most recent results from the Residential Energy 
Consumption Survey.

Overall, 47% use mostly or only LEDs, 15% use mostly incandescent or 
halogens, and 12% use mostly or all compact fluorescent (CFL), with 
another 26% reporting no predominant bulb type, the federal data showed. 
In December, the DOE introduced separate rules banning CFL bulbs, paving 
the way for LEDs to be the only legal light bulbs to purchase.

BIDEN ADMIN'S WAR ON HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES WILL CAUSE HIGHER PRICES, 
DIRTIER CLOTHES AND DISHES, EXPERTS WARN

According to the survey data, LEDs are also far more popular in higher-
income households, meaning the energy regulations will particularly impact 
lower-income Americans. While 54% of households with an income of more 
than $100,000 per year used LEDs, just 39% of households with an income of 
$20,000 or less used LEDs.

"We believe that further regulatory interference in the marketplace is 
unwarranted given that more energy efficient lighting choices, namely 
light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs, are already available for those 
consumers who prefer them over incandescent bulbs," a coalition of free 
market and consumer groups opposed to incandescent bulb bans wrote in a 
comment letter to the DOE last year.

"While LEDs are more efficient and generally longer-lasting than 
incandescent bulbs, they currently cost more than incandescent bulbs and 
are inferior for certain functions such as dimming," the letter continued. 
"Consumers are best served by retaining the choice between incandescent 
bulbs and LEDs rather than regulating incandescent bulbs off the market."

The groups added that estimates of the climate benefits of energy 
efficiency rules are "speculative, assumption-driven, and prone to bias in 
the hands of agencies with a regulatory agenda."

The DOE's rule in April 2022, meanwhile, reversed a Trump administration 
rule that sought to protect incandescent light bulbs and allow consumers 
to choose which products they want to purchase. Former President Donald 
Trump was also personally opposed to LED light bulb adoption, remarking in 
2019 that they are often more expensive, not good and make him "look 
orange."

Environmental groups that opposed the Trump administration's actions, have 
cheered the Biden administration for cracking down on incandescent light 
bulbs.

"We are long overdue to phase out inefficient old-fashioned light bulbs as 
this progress was illegally delayed by the Trump administration for more 
than two years. LED bulbs, which will replace the old incandescents, use 
one-sixth the amount of energy to deliver the same amount of light and 
last at least 10 times longer," said Joe Vukovich, an energy efficiency 
advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Over the last several months, the DOE has introduced a series of energy 
efficiency regulations impacting various home appliances including gas 
stoves, ovens, clothes washers, refrigerators and air conditioners. 
Critics have blasted the rules as federal overreach and unnecessary given 
that the industry has improved technology without government intervention.

On his first day in office in January 2021, President Biden signed an 
executive order requiring the DOE to make "major revisions" to current 
appliance regulation standards and standards set by the Trump 
administration. A month later, the agency began moving forward on more 
than a dozen energy efficiency rules, impacting a wide range of 
appliances.

<https://news.yahoo.com/biden-admin-moving-forward-light-165445494.html>