L.E.D.

by Bob Johnstone

  CFLs also suffered from technical issues. Unlike incandescents, fluorescents are not “instant-on”: there was a disconcerting half-second pause before they lit up. Even then, early lamps took several minutes to reach full brightness. Dimming was also difficult or, in many cases, impossible. This was a drawback in American homes, which muster on average ten dimmer switches. In addition, fluorescent lamps tended to hum and flicker. The problem is intrinsic to magnetic-coil balances. This was more than merely irritating. Flickering, it was believed, triggered migraines. The concern was addressed in 1985 by Osram, which introduced the first CFL with an integrated electronic ballast.

  11 Its original name had been Earth Light, but this made some consumers think it was intended for growing plants. Above all, there was a serious problem with the quality of the light output by compact fluorescents. Whereas incandescents produced a nice warm reddish glow that was perfect for evening and night-time usage, fluorescents cast a ghoulish green-blue light. When CFLs were installed next to bathroom mirrors, this light was not flattering to the skin. In fact, it made faces look downright unhealthy. Or, worse, as one critic put it, “like cadavers.” As a result, early CFLs were often banished to outdoor applications, or hung in garages. The quality problem would eventually be solved by the introduction of new rare-earth phosphors that could render colors more pleasingly. Over the years the performance of CFLs gradually improved. Their price dropped. Trouble is, once a stereotype has become lodged in the public mind, it can be well-nigh impossible to dislodge. Today it is rare to find anyone outside the lighting community with a good word to say for CFLs.

  Interestingly, the reaction to CFLs in Europe and elsewhere was very different. A 1993 study found that more than half of household sockets in Holland and Germany were occupied by compact fluorescents, compared with a paltry one percent in the US. The contrast was even more marked in Japan, where fluorescent fixtures would quickly come to dominate the residential market, with a share of 80 percent in 1993, rising to 95 percent by 2007. Observers were at a loss to explain this phenomenon, falling back on speculation about “the Asian eye” and other supposedly cultural factors. Certainly a compliant Japanese population was more willing to fall in line with government urgings to reduce energy. Ultimately, however, the prime mover was probably economic: electricity was (and is) much more expensive in Japan.12

  In the US, energy ef ficiency acquired negative connotations early on. Ever since Jimmy Carter donned his woolly cardigan and sat in front of a fireless fireplace urging citizens to make sacrifices by turning down their thermostats, conservation had signified doing without. For many Americans it had come to mean “cold houses and warm beer.” People especially resented the government telling them what they could do in their own homes. It proved hard to shake America’s love affair with good old cheap, familiar-looking, warm-light-producing incandescent bulbs.

  CFLs were typically not purchased in stores. Rather, beginning in the 1980s, the lamps were distributed by utilities via programs based on discounted prices, rebates, or outright giveaways. The focus of these programs was on saving energy. Little thought was given to other factors, such as longevity, amenity, and, especially, quality of light. In purchasing CFLs, utilities (and, later, federal government procurement programs) were concerned primarily with cost. Competing for these large contracts forced manufacturers into a race to the bottom. There was no room for great products at $2 a pop. To bring down their price, companies cut corners. One result was lamps that tended to burn out early. Lifetimes were often much shorter than advertised, measuring months rather than years.

  “At SMUD [Sacramento Municipal Utility District] back in the mid eighties,” Gary Flamm recalled, “we were giving away compact fluorescents that we were paying $27 bucks each for. They were bulky, they were magnetic, they flickered, they had poor color rendering — they were crap. For the utilities, the silver bullet was a compact fluorescent for less than a buck, that’s what they pushed manufacturers for. And the manufacturers said, OK, if that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll deliver. So they compromised on quality. That’s the reason consumers don’t like compact fluorescents, although it’s technically possible to have a good compact fluorescent, you’re not gonna get it for a buck. So we basically foisted something on consumers, and consumers [responded], You’ve promised something and you haven’t delivered. And it’s a legitimate argument.”

  12 I lived in Japan during the eighties and nineties and cannot recall ever hearing anyone complain about fluorescent lighting. Nor did I myself notice anything amiss about our domestic life being lit by fluorescent lamps. Knowing what I now do about lighting, in retrospect I find this odd. Perhaps a case of what you don’t know can’t hurt you?

  It was unfortunate that during the period when many of these programs were undertaken, in the 1980s and 1990s, energy prices were low. Then, in 2001, the partial deregulation of Californian electricity market brought about a crisis. Forced to deal with rolling brown-outs, utilities stepped up their lighting initiatives as part of a massive campaign to cut electricity consumption. In a desperate attempt to shed load quickly, the California state legislature authorized $20 million in emergency funding to purchase and distribute almost two million CFLs. Replacing 100-watt incandescents with 25-watt compact fluorescents was briefly seen by residents as a way of doing their bit to save energy.

  The 2005 revision to Title 24 required that more than half of all lighting installed in Californian kitchens be high efficacy, effectively mandating the installation of CFLs. Later that same year, the giant retailer Wal-Mart swung its weight behind CFLs. For a company known for costcutting, switching from inefficient bulbs that generated heat which had to be eliminated by air conditioning made perfect sense. From there it was only a short step to marketing CFLs to its customers. The company set a goal of selling a hundred million CFLs. In Wal-Mart stores the lamps were elevated from the bottom shelf of the lighting aisle, which forced shoppers to bend down, to a more prominent position at eye level. Sales took off.

  It was too late. Shipments of CFLs peaked in 2007, then declined. By 2010, after decades of effort, even in states with long-running and wellfunded promotional programs, the much-maligned CLF had managed to penetrate less than twenty percent of sockets. Intentions had been good, implementation dismal. It was, one observer lamented, “a national tragedy.” In February 2016 GE announced that it would halt production of CFLs by the end of that year. The lights could not meet Energy Star standards scheduled to go into effect in 2017, meaning that utilities would no longer offer rebates on them. The new standards put the final nail in the coffin for what Daraius Patell, general manager of North America for GE Lighting, described as “the bulb everyone loves to hate.”

  Many people had seen CFLs as merely a temporary technology, an interim solution before something better came along. LEDs looked like being that something. But at least in their early incarnations, LEDs suffered from many of the same issues that had bedevilled CFLs; most notably, high prices and low quality. State and federal governments were desperate to learn the lessons and make sure that history did not repeat itself. This time round, things would be different. Or at least, so it was hoped.

  C H A P T E R F I V E

  Politics of Light “T he nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Thus spake President Ronald

  Reagan in 1986, the same year he refused - via an arcane dodge known as a pocket veto - to sign a bill establishing energy efficiency standards for electrical appliances such as refrigerators. “The bill intrudes unduly on the free market,” Reagan explained, adding that the legislation “limits freedom of choice available to consumers who would be denied the opportunity to purchase lower-cost appliances … .” His libertarian arguments could still be heard echoing around the halls of Congress a quarter of a century later, when it came to enacting standards for energyefficient lighting. The question of whether the government could help remained seemi
ngly unresolved. In fact, the President’s laissez-faire logic contained at least two flaws. First, consumers would not actually be forced to buy more expensive appliances. Back in the 1970s at the California Energy Commission Art Rosenfeld and his former grad student David Goldstein had demonstrated that, on average, the most efficient refrigerators cost the same as the least efficient ones. Second, the cost of owning an electrical appliance is not just its purchase price: the cost of the electricity it consumes over its lifetime must also be taken into account. By 1986 the latest freezers were using up to half as much energy as pre-oilcrisis equivalents, saving consumers more than $50 a year on their utility bills.

  In 1982 Reagan’s Department of Energy issued a ruling, derisively known as the “no standards standard.” It left buyers free to decide whether or not they wanted to purchase energy-efficient appliances. The National Resources Defense Council responded by filing suit. The NRDC and other advocates also urged Congress to oblige the department to act. Eventually, the courts ordered the DoE to reconsider its ruling. The saveenergy lobby was not alone in wanting to establish efficiency standards: appliance manufacturers were also concerned that government inertia could hurt their business. California had already adopted appliance standards; other states might follow, raising the unwelcome prospect of a nationwide patchwork of conflicting requirements. In frustration at the government’s unwillingness to do its job, the companies sat down with Rosenfeld and Goldstein, the latter now with the NRDC, and worked out national standards based on the Californian model. They brought the package to the Senate’s Energy & Natural Resources Committee, which promptly enacted their recommendations. Reagan’s pocket veto served merely to delay the bill by a year. In February 1987, by an almost unanimous majority, Congress passed the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act. Thus began a bipartisan tradition of senators working together across party lines to set efficiency standards that would endure for more than twenty years.

  In Washington during the 1980s ideological debate raged over what role, if any, government should play in supporting domestic industry. Nowhere more so than with regard to the US semiconductor industry, which had long been losing market share to its Japanese rivals. Chips were more than a consumer technology: they were also vital to maintaining the US edge in defense. Even Ronald Reagan conceded that government’s first duty was to protect the people (just not to run their lives). In response to the perceived threat from Japan, Congress and the industry clubbed together to form Sematech, a consortium designed to bolster domestic microchip manufacture, with each side contributing $100 million a year. One of Sematech’s most steadfast proponents was Jeff Bingaman, the then junior senator from New Mexico. He strongly believed that the federal government should invest in research that was relevant to the nation’s future. A Democrat, Bingaman chaired the Senate’s armed services subcommittee on defense industry and technology. In this capacity he became aware of the significance of compound semiconductors. (Unlike most chips, which are fabricated using a single element - silicon - compound semiconductors are amalgams consisting of two or more elements.) Alarmed by Japan’s growing lead in this high-performance field, Bingaman made it his business to find out for himself what was happening there. On a trip to Tokyo in 1995, he was briefed on an exciting new development: a bright-blue light emitting diode made from a compound semiconductor called gallium nitride. As a result of this and subsequent trips to Asia, “I became aware of the development of light emitting diodes and solid-state lighting,” Bingaman explained. “It seemed obvious to me,” he added, “that this was another industry that the United States needed to have a significant involvement in.”

  In May 2001 Bingaman took over as chair of the Senate’s energy committee. A timely appointment, coming as it did just a few weeks after the Department of Energy and the Optoelectronic Industry Development Association jointly published a report, The Promise of Solid State Lighting for General Illumination. Bingaman would become the most enthusiastic supporter of LEDs in Congress.

  A cover photo of Jeff Bingaman published by an Albuquerque-based news magazine early in his career was captioned “the most boring man in the US Senate.” On Capitol Hill the senator kept such a low profile that some reporters had difficulty recognizing him. Among reporters who did, Bingaman had a reputation as one of the most frustratingly unquotable members of Congress. Such comments were callow and unfair, reflecting poorly on journalists and the media’s craving for sensational soundbites. In fact, during an illustrious thirty-year career in the Senate Jeff Bingaman was the very model of an elected representative. Unlike the preening popinjays who dominate television talk-shows, he shied away from the spotlight. A soft-spoken, pragmatic moderate, Bingaman took the time to study issues in detail, beavering away behind the scenes in seemingly endless markup sessions, carefully crafting bills in cooperation with his Republican colleagues. After laws passed he made sure that the credit for them was shared equally. Regarding energy, no member had a more important role in articulating policy and in drawing up legislation to implement it.

  It was said of Jeff Bingaman that he was grounded in the character of his native West. He grew up in Silver City, New Mexico, a small [2013 population: 10,273] mining town, the sometime home of the outlaw Billy the Kid.13 Bingaman’s father was a science professor, his mother taught in public schools. His interest in politics derived from an uncle who worked for Clinton Anderson, the driving force behind the Wilderness Act of 1964, a landmark in the history of conservation. Bingaman cited Anderson as his role model. While at Stanford he worked on Robert Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign. After serving as New Mexico’s attorney general Bingaman became a senator in 1982, running on an anti-Reagan policy platform.

  For Bingaman it was imperative that the US should maintain its technological superiority. In part, this was good local politics for him. Two national laboratories were located in New Mexico, Los Alamos and Sandia. They happened to be the largest employers in his state, providing plenty of well-paid jobs. Mostly, however, he was driven to draft laws that were beneficial for the nation as a whole. In Spring 2002 Bingaman published an article in Issues in Science and Technology. “The next generation of lighting technology is upon us,” it began. LEDs could produce white light more efficiently than traditional sources. “Since Thomas Edison, the US has been a world pioneer in the white lighting industry; it’s a position we have held for 90 years.” Now, if the US were to stay ahead, Bingaman wrote, “Congress has an obligation not only to maintain our leadership role in the industry our nation invented, but to promote new technologies for the more efficient consumption of the energy we produce.”

  13 “Now when Billy the Kid was just a young lad/In old Silver City he went to the bad.” [traditional ballad] Achieving the goal of affordable LED light bulbs that were competitive with incandescents would take a sustained decade-long R&D investment. But the result of implementing efficient sources would be enormous savings in energy. History showed that such an investment would be money well spent. A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences claimed that “the single best payoff in energy R&D was an investment in lighting technology: six million dollars invested in electronic ballast R&D yielded thirteen billion in energy savings.” Now Bingaman envisioned “a similar winning payoff in R&D on solid-state lighting, but on a far larger scale, as it will not only maintain our leadership role in the lighting markets, but it will help our country consume far less energy.”

  Echoing Roland Haitz, Bingaman asserted that companies could not afford to pay for the R&D on their own. “Rather, this kind of high-risk, high-payoff pre-competitive research is the kind of fundamental science for which our universities and national laboratories are ideally suited.” To carry out the research, Bingaman proposed an industry-led partnership. Such partnerships, he noted, were not new. Sematech had had a “dramatic effect on the resurgence of the US semiconductor industry.” By the time the article was published, Bingaman had introduced an energy bill that, among many other th
ings, called for the establishment of a Next Generation Lighting Initiative. This would authorize spending on solidstate lighting of $30 million for FY2002 and $50 million per annum for the next nine years. Accounting for less than one percent of the text of the massive (1,724-page) bill, the initiative was barely debated. But the legislation became bogged down in political maneuvering. “Unfortunately there in Congress, you can’t get much done in a short period,” Bingaman told me. “You have to introduce [a bill] in one Congress and try to build some support, then introduce it in the next Congress, and continue to build momentum for what you’re trying to get done.”

  In fact, it took Bingaman, toiling in tandem with his Republican New Mexican counterpart Pete Domenici, four years of wrangling to get the bill passed, resisting what Domenici described as “intense partisan pressure in the Senate.” In addition to the Next Generation Lighting Initiative, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 also mandated three uses for LEDs. Solid-state lighting was to be deployed in all newly-installed traffic signals, pedestrian crosswalk signals, and exit signs in buildings. The act was signed into law that December by George W. Bush at Sandia National Laboratory, the President congratulating Bingaman “for a job well done.” Two years later a second bill, the Energy Independence & Security Act of 2007, addressed new energy efficiency requirements for households and government buildings. EISA set performance levels for lighting as a way of reducing consumption and lowering energy costs to consumers. Though the act did not say so in so many words, its intent was clear: to phase out the wasteful incandescent light bulb, and replace it with energyefficient alternatives. The new standards would begin to take effect in January 2012. Bingaman was proud of the fact that both bills passed virtually unopposed, with 86 senators voting to pass the 2007 act.