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Biden administration to proceed with light bulb ban, advancing 'climate goals'
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Biden administration to proceed with light bulb ban, advancing 'climate goals'

Americans can no longer rely upon the warm glow patented by Thomas Edison, deemed inefficient and outmoded by the state. Instead, they will now have to use LED light bulbs.

The Biden administration is set to enforce its ban on incandescent light bulbs in August.

Last April, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that it would impose two new rules upon the American people as a means of advancing "President Biden's climate goals."

The first coercive measure redefines "general service lamps," and the second implements the minimum standard of 45 lumens per watt for light bulbs that satisfy the revised definition. Together, these rules will prevent retailers from selling incandescent and similar halogen light bulbs.

The new bans announced last year were resultant of President Joe Biden's January 2021 executive order requiring the DOE to make "major revisions" to Trump-era appliance regulation standards, reported Fox News Digital.

Under the Trump administration, Americans were free to choose whatever light bulbs they desired. The Hill reported that the Trump administration was also of the mind that such phase-outs constituted an unnecessary burden on businesses.

Biden's Energy Department suggested that this coercive measure would accelerate the apparent transition already under way.
"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," said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration's latest residential energy consumption survey, 75.2 million American households (~60%) reported having at least one incandescent or halogen bulb in their homes; 8.5 million indicated all of their bulbs were of the verboten variety; 10.19 million indicated most of their light bulbs were incandescent; and another 9.1 million said about half were.

Nearly 50 million of 123.53 million households have reportedly already made the shift approved by the federal government. Wealth is a partial determining factor behind adoption. Households with incomes over $100,000 are more likely to use LEDs than poor households, where LEDs are used only by a minority.

Just the News indicated why this may be the case: The average cost of an LED light bulb is roughly double that of an incandescent light bulb.

Ian Haworth, writing for the Washington Examiner, suggested that the paltry financial benefits promised by the Biden administration are no good if American families can't afford the bulbs to begin with.

Granholm said in another statement that the DOE has worked for over forty years, at the direction of Congress, "to promote innovation, improve consumers' options, and raise efficiency standards for household appliances without sacrificing the reliability and performances that Americans have come to expect."

Concerning the enforcement of the ban, the DOE indicated that it "believes the maximum penalty is both appropriate and necessary."

"This is overregulation on steroids," Ben Lieberman, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Fox News Digital at the time the ban was first announced.

"By using climate as a kind of finger on the scale in favor of tougher standards, I think that's all the more reason to be suspicious that this is going to be a bad deal from a consumer standpoint," he added.

The DOE claimed that the exclusive use of LED light bulbs in conjunction with other regulations will help cut carbon emissions by 222 million metric tons.

Lieberman and a coalition of free market consumer groups penned a letter to the DOE last year, stating that they "believe that further regulatory interference in the marketplace is unwarranted given that more energy efficient lighting choices, namely light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs, are already available for those consumers who prefer them over incandescent bulbs."

The letter claimed that there is a "lack of evidence to support the agency's claims that the Proposed Rule would have any measurable impact on the climate" and that estimates "of the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions are very speculative, assumption-driven, and prone to bias in the hands of agencies with a regulatory agenda."

Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) underscored how this ban is just one among many advanced by the Biden administration: "First, the Biden Admin went after gas stoves. Then, the Biden Admin went after washing machines. Now, the Biden Admin is going after light bulbs. Is there anything they won't try to ban?"

Americans have until August 1 to purchase and stockpile incandescent light bulbs and will be within their rights to use them well after the Biden administration's ban on lighting choice goes into effect.

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