A human life is made up of many different factors, and given the volume in play here, it’s impossible for us to oversee the whole picture. Now, this might sound like a nonfactor under some capacity, but if we dig into our history, we’ll see how such a simple-looking element can actually produce some hugely-detrimental consequences. Hence, just for the purpose of navigating the said risk, we would bring dedicated regulatory bodies into the fold. The move paid off big time, as suddenly, our global structure looked more organized than ever before. However, we’ll see things take another nasty turn once technology gets to the scene. While technology’s expansive nature did a lot to fuel our progression within each and every area throughout our spectrum, it also created a dynamic, which enabled the rule breakers in terms of hiding their misdoings rather effortlessly. As you can guess, this ended up nullifying the authority of our regulatory industry; therefore bringing back the unrest that we thought was gone. Nevertheless, the said freefall has seemingly come to a halt in the recent past. With governing forces out of the wilderness, the scales are tipping one more time, and a recently-introduced regulation backs that up quite well.
The US Department of Energy has formally announced a new set of energy efficiency standards, which are purposed around eliminating outdated light bulbs. Reversing a Trump administration policy, the new rules, alongside raising the baseline requirements, ban any sale of light bulbs that produce less than 45 lumens per watt. According to certain reports, this will save consumers a whopping $3 billion in utility costs every year. Furthermore, the new standards will also keep 222 million tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere over the next 30 years. To give you some perspective, the stated number falls in line with the amount of pollution produced by 48 million vehicles every year. Notably enough, the new rules go into effect around January 2023, but that’s only for manufacturers. The distributors and retailers will have another seven months or so to achieve compliance with the standards.
While LED technology has already taken over the baton to a larger extent, incandescent and halogen bulbs were still making up a sizeable 30% share of total light bulbs sales until 2020. When you look it from that perspective, the new regulations become all the more important.
“LEDs have become so inexpensive that there’s no good reason for manufacturers to keep selling 19th-century technology that just isn’t very good at turning electrical energy into light,” Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. “These standards will finally phase out energy-wasting bulbs across the country,”