Artificial lighting deadlines

The U.S. Congress has set 2012 as the year in which the U.S. will phase out incandescent bulbs, Australia has chosen 2010 as its deadline, and Ireland is looking to end incandescent sales by 2009. These attempts at forced “green-ness” may be a curse disguised as a blessing.

No one would deny that moving to lighting that is more energy-efficient and has a longer lifetime is good for the planet. The less energy a light source uses, the less power need be generated by today’s nongreen utilities; the longer a bulb works, the longer it stays off the garbage heap. But in this instance, forcing a turnover, rather than letting the market make the transition on its own, may not be the most effective way to achieve the desired result.

Today, the compact fluorescent (CFL) bulb is the commonly proffered replacement for incandescent bulbs. The CFL’s moderately higher price is offset by its longer life and energy efficiency; the U.S. Department of Energy says that an Energy-Star-qualified CFL bulb can last up to 8,000 hours — 10 times longer than a standard incandescent — and use about 75% less energy, saving around $30 or more in electricity costs over its lifetime.

Yet solid-state technology can offer much better performance. The life of an LED is generally about 50,000 hours — over 40 times longer than a standard incandescent and about 4 times longer than a CFL. And when it does finally die out, an LED bulb’s volume could be minuscule compared with that of an incandescent or CFL, and so LEDs could reduce lighting’s impact on landfills and recycling even more significantly than CFLs.

However, compared with CFLs, design and application of LEDs for general lighting is still maturing, and although that may change substantially by 2012, a push in the direction of widespread CFL adoption could actually delay the ultimate switch over to solid-state lighting. Then too, there are applications in which switching from incandescent bulbs may not make sense: I can’t remember the last time I changed the bulb in my refrigerator, which is certainly on less than an hour a day.

For now, it might be best for government to tread carefully, lest they throttle highly promising light technologies in their cradles. By heeding unbiased advice from engineers without an interest in promoting a particular technology, governments can institute far-sighted lighting-development programs whose time lines are dictated by pragmatism and progress rather than political posturing.