LED bulbs will finally be bright enough to replace 100-watt incandescent light bulbs but there is a problem - they will cost $50 each. And won't be available until after the ban. And they produce almost as much heat as incandescent bulbs, making them ridiculously inefficient.
Advocates always believe in legislating perfectly healthy businesses out of existence because they contend 'the miracle of capitalism' will make the replacement they just subsidized and mandated through government fiat cheaper. Well, why should they get cheaper when the government created a monopoly market? If capitalism works, and $50 is a good price to pay for a light bulb, it doesn't need government bans on regular light bulbs.
But the 2007 law does just that; it sets an 'efficiency' goal impossible for incandescent bulbs to meet and California, which is always first to drive out business and make things more expensive for consumers, has already banned stores from restocking 100-watt incandescent bulbs.
So Californians are stuck with toxic mercury vapor in their homes - which everyone except Treehugger recognizes is a bad idea - or spending $50 on LEDs or, you guessed it, hoarding incandescent bulbs. So people will be using the exact same light bulbs, except they will have paid more money to buy them. Thanks, Congress!
The government now recognizes this as a problem so they are wasting even more of our money, launching a $10 million "L Prize" for an energy-efficient replacement for the 60-watt bulb, which is the most common used in homes and due to be banned in 2 years.
The largest problem is these ridiculous decisions get made by lobbyists and politicians without ever actually consulting anyone about whether the 'miracle of capitalism' will work using the technology out there.
"It's not necessarily clear to people in the lighting industry that LED chips were ever meant to go into a bulb," Bob Karlicek, the director of the Smart Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, told the Associated Press.
