“”These standards will help cut our nation’s electric bill by over $10 billion a year and will save the equivalent electricity as 30 large power plants,” said Noah Horowitz a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “That translates into a whole lot less global warming pollution being emitted.”
The left is telling a fairy tale about lighting technology. Consumers are rational for the large part. They will choose the lighting technology that best satisfies their needs. Consumers consider purchase price, longetivity, lighting quality, energy consumption and other features. Consumers would choose CFL, LED, and other new technologies appropriately. For prolonged lighting situations, these new technologies often are good alternatives. For non prolonged lighting situations, incandescants are often better.
There is no net benefit from restricting consumer choices. Consumers would already choose new technologies when appropriate. The left is forcing inappropriate choices, costing consumers large amounts. For a bathroom fixture that is operated for only short periods, new lighting technologies deliver little if any energy gains but cost consumers much higher amounts. In addition, some consumers value the light quality of incandescants. These consumers are willing to incur more energy energy usage for better light quality.
The incandescant ban is just another energy boondoggle alongside a growing list including ethanol, biofuels, wind power, solar power, ...
I couldn't find any reference he made to the specifics of home lighting.
The fact is home lighting is such a small fraction of American use of electric power that it really isn't worth discussing. The really big users of lights are department stores, shopping malls, schools, public buildings, offices, factories, warehouses ~ etc. and they've ALL been lit up with fluorescent lighting for most of a century. Highway and parking lot lighting are bigger consumers of electric power than home lighting ~ and there a wide variety of non-incandescent systems are normal.
The whole business of replacing home incandescent lights with some other form of light was just propaganda and to enable environmental activists feel they'd be "doing something" that hadn't already been done by hard core capitalist investors who owned factories!