On his first day in office in January 2021, President Biden signed an executive order requiring the Department Of Energy to make “major revisions” to current appliance regulation standards and standards that were implemented by the Trump administration.
His pledge is coming to fruition as the DOE has already moved forward on over a dozen energy efficiency rules, impacting a wide range of appliances. The latest is moving forward with banning the most common light, the incandescent bulb.
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.”
Last year, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said “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,”
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” reports Fox News.
The DOE claims 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.
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.
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.
