EU ban of halogen lamps - tomorrow - first I've heard of it!

[NiHaoMike]

I have a feeling that banning the incadescent lamps will be insufficient to prevent this, as we are at the dawn of electric cars which are pulling 40-50kWh overnight off the grid... (mean well)

Reducing use off peak is far less of a concern than reducing the peak. And that's why I like Ohmconnect so much - it gives far more incentive to reduce peak usage than raising prices all the time.

[james_s]

Not scrapped, they should have never been introduced. If the high consumption is the problem (I am not saying it is not), then higher energy prices should have been introduced at first !
If prices are high, they should me make me consider to buy more effective devices or consider thermal insulating my house.

You're right, higher energy prices *should* make people consider doing those things, but the general population has demonstrated time and time again that this doesn't happen, at least not on any significant scale. Most people simply don't "get" the connection between the efficiency of their lighting or appliances, insulation, etc and the amount they spend on their monthly bills. The legislation comes long after people have had a sensible opportunity to make changes, and personally I think it's far preferable to nudge other people into the current century before I have to pay higher prices for the energy I use due to other people's waste.

In a rational world, incandescent lighting would have vanished from all but a few specialized use cases decades ago and we would not even be having this discussion but it didn't. People had higher energy prices, they had superior products available, they had attempts to educate the population, they had all this for many years and yet incandescent lamps remained dominant. Legislation came about long after it became obvious that the general population lacked the sense to make rational decisions on their own. I phased out incandescent lighting in my home nearly 20 years ago, so it's baffling to me that any of this legislation is even needed, but clearly it is.

Also a lot of it is directed at companies manufacturing the goods. Without efficiency mandates there is no incentive to develop more efficient products beyond a point, they don't have to pay for the energy their products consume so it is in their best interest to make everything as cheaply as possible while being only good enough that people don't stop buying it. Without fuel economy regulations on cars for example, we'd still have a market flooded with carbureted pushrod engines getting lousy gas mileage because they're cheap to produce, and the initial purchase price is a much greater influence to most people than the long term cost of ownership. People simply don't look at the long term, that has been demonstrated time and time again.

[Zero999]

Yes initial purchase price is one of the main drivers for sales. The average consumer will see that an incandescent light bulb costs a tiny fraction of an LED one and will buy it instead. They will not stop and think about how much more the incandescent lamp will cost them much more money in the long run in energy costs, than the LED lamp. This is really stupid, but I wouldn't go far as to say people are stupid, just that they make irrational choices when purchasing an item and one of those is lower upfront price, over lower operating costs.

Of course one could say that regulations interfere with free choice, but as I said before, all laws do. Where should the line be drawn? It's much better to force manufacturers to make more efficient products and ban the wasteful ones than the alternatives: blackouts, climate change, higher energy prices etc. People should have bad choices taken away from them, for the greater good.

[Tepe]

One thing i'm concerned is whether the  mass production of the Halogen lamps had more impact on polution from manufacture than the LED's.

What kind of pollution? Unless it involves polluting the atmosphere, especially by raising its content of greenhouse gases, it really comes in far lower on scale of things we need to worry about than human-induced climate change regardless how bad it might be locally.