Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller of Sacramento, Calif. recently rejected a petition from both the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) and the American Lighting Association (ALA) to temporarily block new minimum efficiency standards for light bulbs that were adopted by the California Energy Commission in November 2019, according to a report from the Associated Press that was featured in the Star Tribune.
To learn more about the lawsuit, read the initial item from EC&M.
According to a release by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the two associations recently dropped their lawsuit, two weeks after Mueller’s refusal. The associations were fighting the addition of common household types, such as the candle- and flame-shaped bulbs used in chandeliers and sconces, reflector bulbs used in recessed cans and track lighting, round globe bulbs, and the bulbs that can operate at three different light levels – the same models the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently eliminated from being covered by national lighting efficiency standards.
LED and CFL bulbs can still be sold in California, but incandescent and halogen bulbs, which waste up to 90% of their energy as heat, will not since they do not meet the state’s minimum efficiency levels of 45 lm/W. The updated standards are expected to save Californians up to $2.4 billion in energy savings.
For more details on this story, how the efficiency standards came about, background on the associations’ lawsuit, and the end of the legal challenge, read the original report from the Star Tribune and the press release from the NRDC.
