Who Will Pay the Price for LEDs?

Don’t like the weather? Change the lightbulbs.

The Biden administration is reportedly moving forward with plans to implement a sweeping nationwide ban in coming weeks on several types of light bulbs. As editors at BRIGHT report, the ban will affect certain halogen and incandescent bulbs that do not meet energy efficiency standards. According to the administration, these efforts will reduce energy consumption and combat climate change.

Since 2012, U.S. households have increasingly switched to LED light bulbs. Fewer than half of households, however, reported using mostly or exclusively LEDs, according to a survey from Residential Energy Consumption.

According to federal data:

• 47% use mostly or only LEDs,
• 15% use mostly incandescent or halogens.
• 12% use mostly or all compact fluorescent (CFL).
• 26% report no predominant bulb type.

In December, the DOE introduced separate rules banning CFL bulbs, paving the way for LEDs to be the only legal light bulbs to purchase. You’ve got to love those terrible lightbulbs emitting that “pale, pallid glow.”

According to the survey data, LEDs are also far more popular in higher-income households.

Does that mean the new energy regulations will affect lower-income Americans?

• 54% of households with an income of more than $100,000 per year used LEDs.
• 39% of households with an income of $20,000 or less used LEDs.

The Biden administration’s new energy regulations will hit low-income families the hardest.

Making Incandescents Illegal

Remember when some medieval people laughed at those who insisted the world was flat? The Biden administration, not satisfied with merely ruining lighting in upscale hotels, is hard at work attempting to replace all energy that works with energy that doesn’t work. As Francis Menton (Manhattan Contrarian) asks, “who needs 24/7 electricity when you can have electricity that goes on and off with the whims of the wind and the sun?  And as an added benefit it will be three or five times as expensive.”