[Rot 911]

More govt. regulation that screws the consumer.

Went to Lowes last night to get a new ceiling fan. Noticed that all of them now only use the candelabra (small) base light bulbs. I ask why. They say new govt. regulation. ****ing great. I do a quick google search and sure enough find this:

The law is the Energy Policy Act of 2005, PL 109-058, commonly called EPACT 2005. Leaving aside the fact that the bill provides huge financial incentives to oil companies and does nothing to reduce dependence on oil imports, I want to point out a largely overlooked provision of the bill: regulation of ceiling fans.

EPACT prohibits manufacture or import after January 1, 2007, of ceiling fans or lighting kits that do not include bulbs. The bulbs must be of the new compact fluorescent type. That certainly sounds like an energy-conserving measure.

But wait–some fan light fixtures have small candelabra size sockets rather than standard size sockets, and you can’t buy compact fluorescents in that size. So the bill allows the use of incandescent bulbs if the fixture uses candelabra sockets.

Hmm, say the fan manufacturers. If we use standard size sockets, we have to ship compact fluorescent bulbs, which are expensive and contain mercury and are not dimmable (unless we ship the even more expensive dimmable ones, which don’t work all that well yet). But if we simply switch to the candelabra base–even though candelabra bulbs are even more wasteful than regular incandescent bulbs–we can ship the cheap and easy incandescent bulbs.