https://edisonreport.com/2025/01/21/president-removes-ban-incandescent-bulbs/
January 21, 2025
Back in 2010, I had the honor of serving as the chair for what was then known as the IES Annual Conference. One of the event’s key highlights was The Great Debate: The Banning of the Incandescent Bulb, featuring a discussion between Howard Brandston and Kaj den Daas, who was then the Executive Vice-President of Philips Lighting, B.V. Unfortunately, due to illness, Howard was unable to participate, but the debate went on.
On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed the “Unleashing American Energy” executive order, which, among other provisions, removed the ban on incandescent light bulbs. This action aims to “safeguard the American people’s freedom to choose from a variety of goods and appliances, including but not limited to lightbulbs.”
Background on the Incandescent Light Bulb Ban
The move to phase out incandescent light bulbs began with the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which set energy efficiency standards that effectively limited the production and sale of traditional incandescent bulbs. In 2019, the Trump administration rolled back certain aspects of these standards, allowing continued use of some incandescent bulbs. However, in 2022, the Biden administration reinstated and expanded the regulations, leading to a full ban on the sale of most incandescent light bulbs by August 1, 2023.
President Trump’s Executive Order
By signing the “Unleashing American Energy” executive order, President Trump has reversed the 2023 ban, permitting the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs once again. This decision is part of a broader initiative to promote consumer choice and reduce regulatory constraints on various household appliances. The executive order emphasizes the importance of market competition and innovation within the manufacturing and appliance industries.
“By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
(f) to safeguard the American people’s freedom to choose from a variety of goods and appliances, including but not limited to lightbulbs, dishwashers, washing machines, gas stoves, water heaters, toilets, and shower heads, and to promote market competition and innovation within the manufacturing and appliance industries…”
Implications of the Policy Change
Supporters of the policy change argue that it restores consumer freedom, allowing individuals to select lighting options based on personal preference, cost, and specific needs. They contend that some consumers prefer the light quality and immediate illumination of incandescent bulbs over alternatives like compact fluorescent lamps CFLs or LEDs.
Howard Brandston must be smiling right now.
Go Deeper: https://edisonreport.com/2025/01/10/un-ban-incandescent-bulb/
https://archive.nytimes.com/green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/a-defense-of-the-incandescent-light-bulb/
-A Defense of the Incandescent Light Bulb–
By Leora Broydo Vestel April 24, 2009 10:01 amApril 24, 2009 10:01 am
Howard BrandstonConcerninglight.com “The quality of light from the compact fluorescent is about the worst of the major light sources manufactured today,” said Howard Brandston, a lighting designer.
Howard Brandston, an award-winning lighting designer, has worked on a number of high-profile projects in his career — from a makeover of the Statue of Liberty in the 1980s to helping to develop the nation’s first standards for energy-efficient building design.
Now, amid a growing raft of legislation around the globe aimed at phasing out the standard incandescent light bulb (and in some corners, popular resistance to that idea), Mr. Brandston is stepping out of retirement and into the debate over energy-efficient lighting.
Specifically, Mr. Brandston accuses “energy zealots” of using faulty science to determine the efficiency of light bulbs, and he says that simplistic lumens-per-watt comparisons obscure questions of how well different bulbs do what they’re supposed to do: light up a room.
The government, manufacturers and efficiency advocates, in pushing the adoption of compact fluorescents, are “forgetting the lamp has to serve a purpose for the area it’s lighting,” Mr. Brandston said in a recent series of chats with Green Inc. “It has to work within a system which includes the luminaire — the fixture — and it has to work within the room. The room is part of that system. And when you ignore the fixture, the room and the purpose, you’re going to come up with something that is not going to serve well.”
“The system efficiency is really what counts,” Mr. Brandston added, “not lumens per watt, not how much light per watt is produced, but how much of that produced light is actually put to purposeful use.”
Excerpts from an interview with Mr. Brandston follow.
•