Buried deep in 2012 budget legislation was a paragraph or two that prevents the federal government from spending any funds enforcing the 2007 light bulb efficiency standards/ traditional light bulb “ban” through the end of September 2012. While this isn’t a technical repeal of the ban/efficiency standards, it will allow traditional 100 watt incandescent bulbs to continue to be sold through most of 2012 by those companies who aren’t put off by the negative public relations (green groups may well go on the offensive if national retailers continue to sell them) or potential legal liabilities. It isn’t clear yet the extent to which 100 watt traditional incandescent bulbs will be available for consumer purchase in 2012.

The delay/temporary repeal of the ban has some on the left angry, as Tim Carney notes, though I suspect they’d be angrier if this budget rider had been swapped for delaying implementation of some of the more expensive 2011-2012 EPA regulations, which certainly seemed like a possibility.

An actual argument over the pros/cons of this legislation has been had numerous times and neither side has budged (nor have sides budged over whether or not its okay to label this legislation a ban), so any continuation of that seems sort of pointless. However, I’d like to look at the Politico article that attempted to ding Republicans because “big business” is really upset about this recent turn of events:

Big Business usually loves it when the GOP goes to war over federal rules.

But not when it comes to light bulbs.

Farhad Manjoo of Slate is convinced that a new L.E.D light bulb being produced will look similar to incandescent lighting and still save consumers money over the life of the bulb, according to their predictions and his calculations:

[...] On average, an incandescent bulb lasts about 1,000 hours—that’s about a year, if you keep it on for about three hours a day. Electricity in America also costs about 11 cents per kilowatt hour (that’s the average; it varies widely by region). In other words, a 50-cent, 60-watt incandescent bulb will use about $6.60 in electricity every year. Switch’s 60-watt-equivalent LED, meanwhile, uses only 13 watts of power, so it will cost only $1.43 per year. The Switch bulb also has an average lifespan of 20,000 hours—20 years. If you count the price of replacing the incandescent bulb every year, the Switch bulb will have saved you money by its fourth year. Over 20 years, you’ll have spent a total of about $142 for the incandescent bulbs (for electricity and replacement bulbs) and less than $50 for Switch’s 60-watt bulb. (I made a spreadsheet showing my calculations.)

The problem, of course, is that people don’t buy light bulbs that way—a lot can happen in 20 years, and it seems silly to think of light bulbs as a long-term investment vehicle. (Also, neither Switch nor any other light bulb company guarantees that their bulbs will last that long.) Sharenow concedes this line of thinking, and he’s got two answers. First, he argues that as LEDs are mass-produced over time, their prices will plummet—he estimates that a year from now, Switch’s 60-watt-equivalent bulb will sell for under $15, and could hit $10 the year after that. At that price, Switch’s new bulbs will be much harder to resist. The other advantage is that Switch’s bulbs are beautiful—the company has already seen interest from hotels, department stores, and other companies that are happy to pay for high-end decor. These firms will save money on energy and replacement bulbs and look good doing it. And once we see these bulbs showing up in fancy shops and hotels, we may become much more interested in getting them for our homes.

Besides, we won’t have much choice. With traditional bulbs going away, we’re going to need some other source of light, and nobody likes CFLs. LEDs are the light bulbs of the future. And I’m putting my money—well, a little bit of my money—where my mouth is. I’m buying two of the Switch bulbs for the lamps in our living room. Based on the demo I saw, we’ll never notice the difference, at least until we get our utility bills at the end of the month.

The whole thing is worth reading for an overview of the history of how we got to this point and the short coming of the CFLs. I will point out that though the author acknowledges that the CFLs have failed to live up to similar hype, he quickly overcomes any skepticism he claims to have had that this new technology will be widely adopted by consumers, will last as long as they claim it will (though CFLs have not), etc.

To his credit, he acknowledges the large number of uncertainties in his calculation for a mere $70 in estimated savings over 20 years (assuming electricity prices don’t go up or down, none of the bulbs break, that they last the 20 years they are claimed to last, etc.). Yet his conclusion is to throw his hands up in the air, saying roughly ‘the law is the law.’ It would seem that one could as easily conclude that this legislation was a bad idea and the government should back off it.

A lot of recent internet writing concerning light bulb technology has concluded that the regulation ‘worked’ because new technologies are appearing to replace the bulbs. Unfortunately, this analysis ignores opportunity cost. Yes, the U.S. can make laws which causes corporations to research new technologies, but their success does not signal that it was a good idea. What would those resources have been used for absent government regulation? Given the political lobbying that went into the legislation and the historical failure of top-down economic control, I can only imagine that the free-market would have put the lost time and energy to better use.

I checked my apartment to see how many light bulbs I have. It’s well over 20 and I live in Washington D.C. in a pretty small apartment. Replacing each bulb with one of these new, $20 bulbs would cost roughly $400, an amount I’m unwilling to spend on an unproven technology. The amount could be even much higher for other larger households. Does it really make sense to effectively outlaw a wildly popular technology in efforts to save tiny amounts of energy over the future? If it turns out that these bulbs work as advertised, consumers would likely begin to buy them on their own.

In related news, a new report claims that mercury vapor from broken CFLs can easily exceed the established limits deemed safe by the EPA. It is curious that we are being told that its necessary to spend billions on technologies to reduce mercury emissions from coal fired power plants, yet we are supporting policies that encourage the invitation of mercury into our home.

Via The New York Times

Unsurprisingly, the article takes a holier-than-thou tone towards those Americans who (*GASP*) won’t just roll over and let Washington bureaucrats tell us what’s best, and those who don’t feel that it is the government’s business to tell them what kind of lighting they can use in their home.

However, this attack on us mere commoners who actually appreciate consumer freedom runs into a problem: many hotshot interior decorators and lighting specialists also like the incandescent bulbs, thus the stockpiling. It’s an interesting contrast — it is okay for experts who appreciate light to stockpile incandescent bulbs but everyone else is overreacting, possibly succumbing to the right-wing media machine:

It should be noted that, like most decorators, Ms. Williams is extremely precise about light. The other day, she reported, she spent six hours fine-tuning the lighting plan of a project, tweaking the mix of ambient, directional and overhead light she had designed, and returning to the house after dusk to add wattage and switch out lamps like a chef adjusting the flavors in a complicated bouillabaisse.

She is aware that there is legislation that is going to affect the manufacture of incandescent bulbs, but she’s not clear on the details, and she wants to make sure she has what she needs when she needs it.

So does John Warner, a restaurateur in Washington whose new bistro, Le  Zinc, will open next month on Wisconsin Avenue. He has signed a 15-year lease on the place, which is layered in warm woods, with lots of art and photographs and 50 light fixtures, 16 of them designed to hold a 40-watt soft-white G.E. incandescent bulb. By estimating that his lights will be on for 15 hours a day, and factoring in the package’s promise of a 2,000-hour life span per bulb, Mr. Warner has calculated that he will need 600 of these bulbs to last through his lease.

“I have a light-enough carbon footprint in the other aspects of the design,” he said, “so I can allow myself a lighting splurge.”

Compare that to this:

Nonetheless, as the deadline for the first phase of the legislation looms, light bulb confusion — even profound light bulb anxiety — is roiling the minds of many. The other day, Ken Henderlong, a sales associate at Oriental Lamp Shade Company on Lexington Avenue, said that his customers “say they want to stockpile incandescent bulbs, but they are not sure when to start. No one knows when the rules go into effect or what the rules are.”

Probably this is because articles about light bulb legislation are incredibly boring, and articles about the end of the light bulb as we know it are less so. Certainly they stick in the mind longer.

For years, Glenn Beck, among other conservative pundits and personalities, has proclaimed the death of the incandescent light bulb as a casualty of the “nanny state” (never mind that the light bulb legislation is a Bush-era act), and he has been exhorting his listeners to hoard 100-watt light bulbs (along with gold and canned food). This year, conservative politicians took a leaf from his playbook, introducing bills like the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act, courtesy of Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman, that would repeal the 2007 legislation.

Dear New York Times: Conservatives are capable of passing legislation that angers other conservatives. Similar phenomena occurs on the left. Please note for future articles.

The article also pushes the misleading claim that incandescent bulbs aren’t being banned. They are being forced to meet efficiency requirements which traditional bulbs cannot meet: thus, the bulb that American’s know will be banned. Halogen incandescents (which are still extremely costly) will be able to be purchased. Thus, people understandably get anxious when they see that they might need to purchase $50 LED bulbs:

Last week, for example, in the middle of Lightfair, an annual trade show for the lighting industry, Philips unveiled a winged LED bulb with a promised life span of 25,000 hours and a price tag of $40 to $50. The Associated Press reported its cost as $50, and Fox News ran the story with the headline “As Government Bans Regular Light Bulbs, LED Replacements Will Cost $50 Each.” Mr. Beck, Rush Limbaugh and conservative bloggers around the country gleefully pounced on the story, once again urging the stockpiling of light bulbs.

I previously wrote about the $50 light bulb here (a gleeful pounce indeed, though I haven’t urged anyone to stockpile the light bulbs). Fear not America, the New York Times has spoken, and they’ve asked you to sit down, shut up, and enjoy the ride.

This week Philips Co. showcases its newest success at capturing rents produced by government mandates: it has produced a 17-watt LED bulb that functions as equivalent to a 75-watt incandescent bulb. The catch: they will initially cost around $50.

The announcement contains the usual boilerplate about how in just a few more years these light bulbs will be the cat’s pajamas, and everyone will be buying them. Go get in line. Lynne Kiesling comments:

This week Philips is releasing a mass-market LED light bulb with a physical and lumens-delivering profile to mimic incandescents at a fraction of the energy use. But they’ll still be priced at $40-45, which is a bit steep for customers who are accustomed to cheap, short-lived bulbs, so their market success will require some education and adaptation of expectations. They will also have to overcome the hurdles of the failed expectations of compact fluorescent bulbs, which have not demonstrated the required longevity/price tradeoff to make them economical (in addition to their other shortcomings). I may buy one to test, but I don’t plan on fitting out my whole house in these LEDs any time soon, based on my CFL experience.

Yep. These might be the better buy, but I won’t be surprised if consumers shun these bulbs until more data is in. LK notes that we went down this road with CFLs and they have yet to demonstrate their superiority. The article suggests it might take 17-25 years for the bulb to burn out, and thus, for the consumer to capture the savings over traditional incandescent bulbs.

Capturing the surplus value here, assuming it exists, requires that I live in the same location for the next 25 years (let’s hope not),  or take all of the bulbs with me when I leave without breaking any of them (and seriously, who steals all the light bulbs on the way out of a rental apartment — goodbye security deposit and dignity), pray that they fit into my future abode, re-sell them on E-Bay, etc.

Cheers to the people who claim that government incentives are required for innovation! Look at what you created — a bulb that might last 25 years if anyone is around to notice (remember, we all die in the long run), and costs roughly 100 times more than a traditional bulb.

I myself am holding out for night vision contact lenses, making lighting obsolete.