The jump to LED lights is gaining speed with the spread of news about incandescent bulb production stopping Jan. 1. Indeed, from 2014, forty and sixty watt incandescent bulbs will be banned from being manufactured in (or imported into) the US. These light bulbs are very inefficient and squander roughly ninety percent of their energy, emitting as much heat as they do light. They comprise more than fifty percent of all the bulbs that are bought in the country.

During the past couple of years, seventy-five watt and one-hundred watt incandescent light bulbs have started to be phased out. This is in line with the 2007 Energy Security and Independence act, brought into effect under the Bush White House. Reportedly, after these inefficient bulbs have been completely phased out, US citizens will save thirteen billion dollars on their yearly energy bills.

Recently (in 2012), LED bulbs have fallen in price to roughly $10.00, from about $50.00. These bulbs save consumers as much as $100.00 over their lifetime (twenty-five years), as opposed to regular incandescent bulbs. Partly, this is because they convert approximately sixty percent of their energy into light, in comparison to the ten percent of conventional incandescents. Consequently, LED bulbs only require 9.5 watts, in order to produce an identical quantity of light as the old sixty watt bulbs.

These developments extend way beyond home energy usage. Lighting accounts for nineteen percent of all the electricity used in America. The Natural Resources Defense Council states that, if each of America’s four billion light bulb sockets contained LED or compact fluorescent lights, thirty coal plants’ worth of energy would be conserved. In this instance, power plant mercury emissions would fall sixty percent, and one-hundred million tons of carbon would be stopped from polluting the atmosphere every year.

This week, a survey released by the lighting firm Osram Sylvania, showed that fifty-nine percent of customers were unaware that production of the popular forty and sixty watt lights bulbs will be discontinued, as of 2014. Notwithstanding, on the 1st of January, the incandescent bulbs will not be instantly removed from the shelves. Stores will carry on selling them, until they are completely sold out.