SSLEC: The Solid State Lighting and Energy Center

The List: Products in Peril

ForeignPolicy.com article, April 2007.

The Incandescent Light Bulb

The alternatives: Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and light emitting diodes (LEDs). Up to five times more efficient than incandescent bulbs, CFL bulbs also last four to ten times longer. Yet although they’re cheaper in the long run, most consumers have been reluctant to pay the extra initial cost per bulb. LEDs are brighter than incandescents, up to twelve times as efficient, and last even longer than CFLs, but they have yet to break out of the high-end market.

The future: Lights out. Australia plans to phase out incandescent bulbs by 2010, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 800,000 tons a year by 2012. And last month, the European Union ordered member states to ban incandescent bulbs within two years, saving some 20 million tons of carbon emissions every year. There have been calls to introduce similar legislation in California. Light bulb makers have gotten the message, and are pushing consumers to shift to CFLs. Even Wal-Mart has joined in. But if prices come down, the long-term future could belong to LEDs. If just 25 percent of the light bulbs in the United States were converted to LEDs, according to Steven DenBaars, professor of material science at the University of California Santa Barbara, the country could avoid building 133 new coal power plants by 2025.