Finding new ways to look at the same old things.

The banning of incandescent light bulbs has been seen as a major victory for the environmental movement – but now they’re making a comeback. Here’s why.

via pathsoflight.us

The quintessential, iconic action of the contemporary green movement has been changing your light bulb from the warm, soft rays of the 19th-century incandescent light bulb to the super-efficient yet somewhat muted compact fluorescent (CFL) bulb. Making the switch is an obvious choice, no matter if your priorities are economical or environmental – a CFL bulb promises savings of more than $30 over the course of its longer lifespan while also slowing the emission of greenhouse gases due to its reduced energy use.

One could see the CFL bulb as forming a sort of subliminal trinity for optimists and changemakers worldwide – switching to the new bulbs is demonstrably world-changing and cost-cutting at the same time, as well as being able to affect sweeping legislative changes in a relatively short amount of time. Unsurprisingly, the EU and Canada are on track to phase out old-school incandescents in the next few years, and even the U.S. is in the mix with a 2012 target date (though Venezuela and Cuba beat us all by banning them back in 2005).

With so much momentum, it’s surprising to read that we may be starting to awake from the wet dream of the CFL bulb – or at least that things may be drying up. It’s been reported recently that sales of CFL bulbs made up only 21 percent of all lighting purchases in 2008, down 2 percent from the year before. Not a dramatic decrease, for sure, but a major setback considering that CFLs nearly doubled their market share from 2006 to 2007.

It’s no surprise that consumers think more about short-term value than long-term investment during a recession. While replacing all the lighting in your house with CFLs may save hundreds of dollars in energy costs over the next few years, the bulbs are still clearly more expensive in the short run – costing around $2 each as opposed to a quarter for the average incandescent bulb. As economic conditions return to normal, one would expect for consumers’ mindsets to readjust and once again consider their purchases with a broader, more long-term perspective.

The other side is that maybe the stubborn American consumer never fully embraced CFL bulbs, for reasons aesthetic, economic or both, leaving researchers across the country to try and find ways to create an incandescent light bulb with the efficiency of a CFL.

The Energy Independence and Security Act signed by President Bush in December 2007 calls for light bulbs to use 30 percent less energy than today’s incandescents in two phases starting in 2012. What it doesn’t specify is how one should reach that goal, but everyone assumed that this meant CFLs rising, incandescents waning.

Miraculously, Thomas Edison’s torch to the modern world is making a remarkable comeback in terms of innovation. One researcher familiar with the race to the next-generation incandescent claims that there have been “more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades.”

Edison’s bulb is highly inefficient, generating 90 percent heat and only 10 percent light. Through innovations with the bulb filament and its glass coating, researchers have now increased the efficiency by about 30 percent, which would bring the bulbs to within the 2012 standard. There’s also plenty of recent innovations being made in LED bulbs, which use even less energy than CFLs.

What’s brought on this flurry of innovation is – like so many technological innovations – government mandate. The stakes are high – it’s estimated that approximately $10 billion can be saved in electric bills every year when the new standards go into effect. Equally impressive is the fact that with less than three years to go until traditional incandescents will begin to be phased out, they still command nearly 80 percent of the market.

There’s inevitably going to be dramatic changes in the lifestyles of the American consumer in the next several years, especially when considered with President Obama’s mandate to improve miles per gallon standards by about 40 percent in the next several years, for example. But these policies serve as further reminders of the importance of government on the consumer – as well as innovation.