Did you know that pretty soon over a half a billion people are going to be saying goodbye to incandescent lamps? Yeah. A half a billion, plus. There’s a great article at Forbes about this very topic. Please read it!
An excerpt:
In a little more than a year, more than half a billion people in nearly 30 nations around the world will bid adieu to the incandescent light bulb.
Last week, the European Union joined Australia, the Philippines and Cuba in finalizing plans to outlaw the sale of incandescent light bulbs by 2010. The U.S. plans to ban the bulbs beginning in 2012.
And for good reason. Incandescent light bulbs, which convert heat into light, are notoriously lazy, using only about 2% of the electricity they consume and wasting the rest as heat. Considering that lighting accounts for nearly one quarter of the world’s electricity use, the potential energy savings are prodigious. The prospect of converting those savings into profits has encouraged a clutch of companies to commercialize cutting-edge lighting technologies. If the past presages the future, it will take more than an intriguing technology and superior economics to kill the incandescent light bulb, especially in the U.S.
