Department of Energy plans to roll back energy efficiency standards for light bulbs.

Comment period ends May 3, 2019

About half of all light bulbs, the pear-shaped ones, already meet high efficiency standards and are L.E.D.s The L.E.D.s have saved consumers $billions. New standards for the other 50% of bulbs are due to begin in 2020. But the DOE wants to block the new standards, in order to carry on their mission to extract every last drop of oil and gas on the planet.

Excerpts from “Thomas Edison Would Not Be Happy, ” NYTimes, April 13, 2019:

“The Department of Energy now wants to roll back new efficiency standards signed into law by President George W. Bush and updated, as required, during the Obama administration.The latest update added inefficient three-way, reflector, globe-shaped and candelabra-style bulbs to the list covered by the standards. These incandescent and halogen bulbs are used in up to 2.7 billion lighting sockets, just under half of all the conventional sockets in American homes and businesses.

The new standards, which would require these bulbs to be as efficient as widely used pear-shaped bulbs and would phase out inefficient incandescents and halogens, were approved in 2017 in the waning days of the Obama administration after a rule-making process of more than two years. Manufacturers and retailers have been preparing since then for the new rules to become effective on Jan. 1, 2020. 

Unfortunately, the Trump administration plans to step back from that decision and exempt these bulbs from the standards. If that happens, American consumers will miss out on an estimated $12 billion in annual savings on their utility bills, or about $100 for each household, according to the Appliance Standards Awareness Project. It also means more electricity will need to be generated — 25 coal-burning 500-megawatt power plants’ worth, based on calculations by the Natural Resources Defense Council, creating the same amount of pollution that spews from the tailpipes of seven million cars a year.

The European Union has already banned incandescent and halogen bulbs, and many developing countries are in the process of doing the same, which means America could become a dumping ground for cheap, energy-wasting bulbs.”

What should I say?

Dear Secretary Perry,

The DOE holds immense power over our future. Actions taken by the DOE to lead the country in our transition to a decarbonized economy; or not, will have immense impact on the speed and severity of climate change in the 21^stcentury.  

Business-as-usual energy policies must be reversed. Sixty-five percent of the energy generated in the U.S. is wasted, according to your own agency.  Raising energy efficiency standards for lighting will reduce carbon emissions, boost the economy, and create jobs.  The NRDC has estimated that if every household in the United States replaced just one old bulb with an L.E.D., the country’s overall electric bill would be cutby more than $5 billion in 10 years, and two million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution would be avoided. 

There is no Planet B.

Contact

Submit comment online to the DOE at regulations.gov https://www.regulations.gov/searchResults?rpp=25&po=0&s=Energy%2BConservation%2BStandards%2Bfor%2BGeneral%2BService%2BLamps&fp=true&dct=FR%2BPR%2BN%2BO%2BFR%2BPR%2BN%2BO  click on Comment Now!

Secretary Rick Perry

U.S. Department of Energy

1000 Independence Ave. SW

Washington, DC 20585

202-586-5000

LETTER TO TEACHERS

As we look forward to celebrating the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States in 2020, we are writing to suggest an opportunity for you and your students As members of the local League of Women Voters we have been especially interested to learn about the many African American women who were active leaders in the fight for women’s suffrage. Unfortunately, when many people think about this struggle, they mention Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt, but the African American women whose efforts contributed to the eventual success of the effort, have not always been acknowledged as they should be. Although Sojourner Truth is quite well known, we have also learned about Harriet Forten Purvis, Angelina Weld Grimke, Charlotte Rollin, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Ida B. Wells, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Josephine Pierre Ruffin, Sarah Askin of Florence, and others.

These women and others advocated tirelessly for over 100 years until the 19th Amendment was finally ratified in 1920. We know that voting rights were a central focus of the Civil Rights Movement and continue to be a concern today. We anticipate that it will be of special interest to young people to discover the history of these suffragists. We understand that the fight for equal access to voting rights remains an evolving story, and that we all need to continue to work together to ensure the right and equal access of all citizens to participate fully in our democracy through voting.

We can imagine that, during the upcoming 100th anniversary year, this could be an exciting research topic for your students. As a way to showcase their learning, students might write plays, narratives or poems or create art or multi-media projects describing the efforts of these leaders. Such possibilities are a good match for curriculum standards in English Language Arts and Social Studies including the new Massachusetts requirement for civics education. Members of our local League of Women Voters are ready to help in any way we can. For instance we are collecting relevant historical information that we would be pleased to share with you and your students. We are consulting our own historical archives that are held at Smith College, as well as resources at the Daily Hampshire Gazette, the David Ruggles Center in Florence and websites like https://suffragistmemorial.org/african-american-women-leaders-in-the-suffrage-movement/

Thanks for considering this possibility. If you’re interested, please let us know how we can help.

League of Women Voters: Empowering Voters – Defending Democracy