Incandescent light bulbs are officially banned in the U.S.::America’s ban on incandescent light bulbs, 16 years in the making, is finally a reality. Well, mostly.
Incandescent light bulbs are officially banned in the U.S.::America’s ban on incandescent light bulbs, 16 years in the making, is finally a reality. Well, mostly.
Try not to dismiss everything so quickly. I came up with those in 5 minutes but a committee of experts could find many more. When the exceptions were written they had a reason. A few examples:
In a traffic fixture, the heat that the incandescent bulb generates often serves to melt ice, and early traffic fixtures with LEDs did have icing problems. Replacing the fixtures would represent a significant burden.
An LED wouldn’t survive in an oven and oven lights aren’t on for very long either so what would it matter?
A bulb in a refrigerator could be exposed to condensation.
Dimmer compatible LEDs require pulse width modulated dimmers. Incandescent dimmers are often resistance dimmers.
The exception are there to make sure that a $1 part doesn’t render a $1000 appliance inoperable. Replacing the appliance would undoubtedly generate a ton more carbon than using an incandescent and the rule doesn’t say that LED bulbs are prohibited just that incandescent bulbs for those uses are not yet banned.
I’ll also point out that LEDs are made of plastic and essentially become ewaste at the end of their life so there is a trade off to consider too.