Last light bulb factory in US closed - EPA sent jobs overseas

The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month

What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.

Invented at GE, the CFL requires that each bulb be hand blown in order to twist the glass tube into a spiral. A Chinese entrepreneur named Yan had workers in China sit beside furnaces and bend the glass by hand. Even with the low-wages there, the first attempts were very expensive, clunky and flickered when turned on, he said. But no one could improve the process.

The business prospered and Yan's factories in China employed as many as 14,000 - not so far off from the 40,000 glass blowers that Hammer had once imagined would be necessary. With new automation techniques, Yan is seeking to cut the number of his employees in China, where wages are rising, to 5,000 by year's end.

Today, about a quarter of the lights sold in the United States are CFLs, according to NEMA, an industry association. Of those, Yan says, he manufactures more than half. Someday soon,

Yan says, he hopes to build a U.S. factory, though he so far has been unable to secure $12.5 million in government funding for the project.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/07/AR2010090706933.html