By SAQIB RAHIM of ClimateWire
Published: June 28, 2010
Earlier this month, when Ikea announced this will be its last year selling incandescent light bulbs, the retailer billed it as an early, pro-sustainability move before federal law "bans" the famously inefficient lamps.
Yet even after the phaseout is complete on New Year's Day, Ikea shoppers will still find bulbs that, technically, are incandescents, but they will be pricier and more efficient than their elderly cousins.
The lighting industry hopes to get a final financial flicker from the incandescent light bulb by making it more efficient before it heads off the commercial stage.
Press coverage has described federal law on incandescents as a "ban," although this is not strictly true. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 raised efficiency standards for "general service" incandescent lamps, the light bulb known to millions. The targets will take full effect in 2014.
However, these standards are high enough that incandescents used today -- which basically resemble the one designed by Thomas Edison in 1879 and perfected by General Electric in 1906 -- won't make the grade.
The U.S. phaseout parallels efforts in other wealthy countries, as well as some developing countries, to reduce incandescent use or ban them outright.
In an incandescent, electricity passes through a filament made of tungsten; the resistance in the metal causes it to glow, or incandesce. But 90 percent of the energy is lost as heat. That's why they've been described as "heaters that give off a little light."
read more at The New York Times
