The End of Inefficient Incandescents?

Energy-efficiency advocates and Philips Lighting Company, the world’s largest manufacturer of light bulbs and lighting products, have announced an agreement to phase out incandescent light bulbs by 2016. The proposed “soft ban” seeks to dramatically reduce the energy use of lighting products through both voluntary and regulatory policies.

The new Lighting Efficiency Coalition, which includes Philips, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Earth Day Network, Californians Against Waste, and the Alliance, promotes substituting inefficient incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), energy saving halogens, and light emitting diodes (LEDs).

The group remains committed to technology-neutral standards and will support public polices that provide incentives to consumers and businesses to purchase and develop more energy-efficient products.

“Encouraging our customers to use advanced compact fluorescent light bulbs and other energy-efficient lighting is fundamental to our plans to meet growing demand for electricity as economically as possible,” said Jim Rogers, chairman, president, and CEO of Duke Energy.

The coalition’s effort of promoting instead of requiring new technologies builds on similar approaches by European lighting manufacturers and Australia officials and a recent proposal in California to ban incandescent bulbs.

The U.S. Department of Energy notes that if each American household replaced just one incandescent bulb with a fluorescent, the country would save enough energy to light 2.5 million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of 800,000 cars.

The plan proposed by the Lighting Efficiency Coalition would save consumers and businesses nearly $18 billion annually on electricity bills and significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.