Biden administration finalizes rules phasing out incandescent and halogen lightbulbs

The end has come for the old-fashioned incandescent lightbulb.

The Energy Department finalized two rules Monday requiring manufacturers to sell energy-efficient lightbulbs, effectively putting a “sell-by” date on older, inefficient bulbs that don’t meet the new standards. The move will speed the pace of a lighting revolution that is already well underway, driving down electricity use, saving consumers money and slashing greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector.

The new rules, which reverse a policy from the days of former president Donald Trump, expand energy-efficiency requirements to more types of lightbulbs and ban the sale of those that produce less than 45 lumens per watt - a measure of how much light is emitted for each unit of electricity. This will eventually prohibit most incandescent and halogen lightbulbs and shift the country toward more efficient and compact fluorescent and LED bulbs.

Biden administration officials estimate that, taken together, the two rules will save consumers about $3 billion annually when fully implemented. They also project that the changes will cut carbon emissions by 222 million metric tons over the next 30 years, roughly equivalent to what 28 million homes generate annually.

“By raising energy efficiency standards for lightbulbs, we’re putting $3 billion back in the pockets of American consumers and substantially reducing domestic carbon emissions,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. “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.”

Although sales of LED lightbulbs have grown rapidly, the most recent sales data shows that incandescent or halogen bulbs still made up about 30 percent of the market in 2020.

The new efficiency standard will take effect 75 days after it is printed in the Federal Register. But the Energy Department will phase in enforcement over time. For manufacturers, full enforcement of the new rule will begin Jan. 1, 2023. Retailers and distributors will have an extra seven months to comply, giving them more time to sell existing inventory.

The American Lighting Association, a trade group, had asked the Biden administration to postpone fully implementing stricter lightbulb efficiency standards for two years. In June, it warned that a faster pivot away from incandescent bulbs to energy-efficient LEDs would result in “major financial losses” for lighting manufacturers and retailers, as well as “a glut of stranded inventory, piling up at individual showrooms and eventually landfills.”

If not for Donald Trump, the U.S. would have banned the sale of incandescent lightbulbs two years ago, with only a handful of exceptions. Instead, his administration rolled back these energy-efficiency standards on the grounds that they were “not economically justified.”

At the time, the Natural Resources Defense Council advocacy group said the rollback could boost energy consumption by an amount equal to the output of 30 large power plants.

But Trump decried more efficient lightbulbs, telling House Republican lawmakers in 2019, “The light’s no good. I always look orange.”

Each month that incandescent bulbs remain on the shelves equates to about 800,000 tons of preventable carbon dioxide emissions that enter the atmosphere over those products’ lifetime, according to the Appliance Standards Awareness Project.

The lightbulb rollback was part of the Trump administration’s government-wide war on federal regulations. Trump officials also weakened standards for dishwashers and created a new class of less-efficient washing machines and clothes dryers. They did not act on dozens of overdue efficiency standard upgrades for household appliances, such as gas furnaces and freezers.

Biden’s Energy Department has restored many of the original efficiency standards, reversing the Trump-era rules for dishwashers, washing machines and clothes dryers. The department also closed a loophole, created under Trump, that increased how much water could be used in a shower by allowing multiple nozzles to carry equal amounts of water at once. Administration officials aim to complete 100 energy-efficiency actions this year.