Jeff Bingaman: “I rise today with Senator DeWine to introduce a bill authorizing the Secretary of Energy to lead the United States into…”

“I rise today with Senator DeWine to introduce a bill authorizing the Secretary of Energy to lead the United States into the next generation of lighting technology. If this bill is enacted, I believe it will allow us not only to maintain a world leadership role that Thomas Edison started, but promote efficiency advances in a market which consumes 19 percent of our electrical energy supply. Lighting is a 40-billion-dollar global industry. The United States occupies roughly one-third of that market. It's an extremely competitive industry whose technology has been well established over the course of 80 years. Today's lighting market primarily consists of two technologies. The first technology is incandescent lighting, it's the one Thomas Edison invented over 100 years ago. Incandescent lighting relies on running a current through a wire to heat it up and illuminate your surroundings. Only 5 percent of the electricity in a conventional bulb is converted into visible light. The second type of lighting is fluorescent lights, which use a combination of chemical vapors, mainly mercury, to discharge light when current is passed through it. Flourescent lights are six times more efficient than a light bulb. As I have mentioned, today's lighting uses up about 19 percent of our electricity supply. In 1998, lighting electricity cost about 47 billion dollars which accounted for about 100 million tons of carbon equivalent from fossil energy plants.”