By now, most people in the energy industry have heard about the plan from the Trump administration to boll back efficiency standards on light bulbs. Given the massive reduction to energy use in homes, businesses, and industry that the original Obama-era standards brought, the decision to roll back standards on certain parts of these standards is an eye-popping proposal. But what exactly is the situation, how impactful would it be, and how would it affect utilities? Let's dig in...

Summary of Proposal

According to the Department of Energy, the plan is to undo two specific rules that were put in place at the end of the Obama administration that expanded the types of bulbs to which stricter efficiency standards would apply-- specifically removing three-way bulbs, candle-shaped bulbs used in chandeliers, and reflector bulbs in recessed lights from the need to comply with new efficiency standards that were going into effect next year.

So, to be sure, the rollback isn't completely undoing the bulb efficiency standards. Incandescents and mercury vapor lights are still phased out, and existing standards for basic lights remain, but just because these efficiency standards rollbacks are only applying to a subset of lights does not mean they are insignificant...

Effects of Proposal

The categories of lights being covered still aggregate to account for a large amount of energy usage across the United States. To give a few facts & figures:

The categories covered by this rollback accounted for 2.9 billion lightbulbs sold in 2015 (compared with 3.5 billion A-series lightbulbs aka the standard-shaped ones you typically think of)

The NRDC's center for energy efficiency standards says this proposed rollback would add $12 billion in power costs ($100 per household per year) by 2025

DOE's own Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory calculates that this move would add 540 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by 2030 due to increased energy consumption

Put that way, it's clear that this rollback is no small act and will in a single stroke really undercut much of the energy efficiency progress being made across the country.

Impact to Utilities

Bringing this to utilities, what will be the broad impact? Utilities have become partners when it comes to promoting consumer energy efficiency in recent years. Whether that partnership has taken the shape of rebate programs, providing new lights, or otherwise, promoting energy efficiency has become a staple of overall utility strategies. More efficient technologies help drive down the overall load on the grid in a way that's much cheaper than building out new generation sources to account for increased energy use. Because of this, utilities would surely be incentivized to see the lighting efficiency standards be allowed to go into effect-- but I've not seen any indications for individual utilities or from trade groups that it's a battle the industry will spend its resources and political capital.

Though a public meeting to take feedback on the proposal is taking place a week from today and the 60 day comment period is still wide open, so it will surely be interesting to see what comments are received, the overall quantity and content of those comments, and how the Trump administration will move forward.