A new light is about to burn more brightly: the stubby, squiggly fluorescent bulb. Environmentalists love it, Wal-Mart is promoting it and Australia is eyeing it as an easy way to save energy and curb global warming.
Now, California lawmakers are giving it some wattage by considering a ban on the sale of old-fashioned incandescent bulbs beginning in 2012.
The proposed switch represents a revolution in a lampshade, because incandescents account for 95% of light bulb sales. Replacing each descendant of Thomas A. Edison's invention with a low-energy, long-lasting, compact fluorescent bulb would slash electricity consumption by 75%, proponents say.
Retired aerospace engineer Frank Vincent is sold. "I use them. It saves me energy and it saves me money on that energy," said Vincent, 63, who was shopping Friday at a Wal-Mart store on Crenshaw Boulevard.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has thrown considerable marketing might behind the newfangled bulbs, urging its 100 million customers to buy at least one. The world's largest retailer says that would collectively save them $3 billion over the bulbs' life.
The companies that make traditional incandescent bulbs aren't ready to accept the idea that their wares might go the way of the whale-oil lamp, despite talk of bans in California and Britain and Australia's announcement this week that it would phase out the sale of the older-style bulbs over the next two years.
General Electric Co., the company Edison founded in the late 1800s and the largest light bulb manufacturer in the United States, announced Friday that it was developing a new generation of incandescent bulbs that would be twice as efficient as the current version and would be ready for the market in 2010. An even more energy-stingy version -- equal to the current compact fluorescents -- could be in stores by 2012, when California's proposed prohibition would take effect.
"We want consumers to know they will have an energy-efficient incandescent choice. It does not have to be one or the other," said Kim Freeman, a spokeswoman for GE's lighting division.
Many energy experts applaud the California bulb ban bill as a natural move by government to raise energy-efficiency standards, akin to requiring new homes to have high-rated thermal insulation and double-pane windows.
"There are sound economic reasons for this," said Peter Navarro, an energy economist at UC Irvine. "If you just rely on the marketplace, you're not going to solve the problem."
