Congress offers glimmer of hope for incandescent lightbulb

The House's passage of a $1.1 trillion spending bill Wednesday that dictates the budgets for all federal agencies may be a desperately needed lifeline for the lightbulb. The bill includes a prohibition on funding for “the administration’s onerous ‘lightbulb’ standard,” as Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., described it, which had sought to dramatically improve the energy efficiency of ordinary incandescent lightbulbs but ultimately spelled the end of the road for the century-old technology.