In 2012 cheap but inefficient incandescent light bulbs will be no more

The NY Times has an interesting article noting that inefficient incandescent bulbs will stop being sold in four years: No Joke, Bulb Change Is Challenge for U.S. Here’s an excerpt:

“Sure, you’ll see more compact fluorescents five years from now, but you would have seen them without any energy bill,” said the chief executive of Osram Sylvania, Charlie Jerabek.
Michael B. Petras Jr., vice president of GE Consumer and Industrial — the unit that includes General Electric’s lighting business — broadened the thought to all forms of lighting. “You’ll see different light sources for your decorative chandelier, for your recessed lighting and for your under-cabinet lights,” he said. “And I can assure you that all the kinds of light sources are already getting a lot more efficient.”
Including incandescents.
Congress has not specifically outlawed incandescent bulbs, only inefficient ones.
In February, G.E. said that it was developing a high-efficiency incandescent that will radiate more than twice the light of conventional incandescents. It expects to make that one commercially available by 2010, and one that is twice as efficient a few years later.
Read more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/22/business/22light.html?_r=1&ex=1355979600&en&oref=slogin

It’s interesting to note that incandescents won’t be entirely canned but what guidelines will be used to determined the threshold for “inneffecient” bulbs? We’ll have to see wait unfolds in the next four years.