WINCHESTER, VA. – The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s. This Story * Steelworkers union targets China on green-energy exports * Light bulb factory closes; End of era for U.S. means more jobs overseas * Phasing out the incandescent bulb * U.S.'s Ron Kirk Discusses July Trade Deficit Report: Video * Video: G.E. employees deal with factory closing * World Economic Forum survey: Debt, financial crisis hurt U.S. competitiveness * Your Take: More 'green' jobs in the U.S.? * Lights out for ordinary bulbs made in the U.S. * U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk talks about July deficit * Trade gap narrowed in July View All Items in This Story View Only Top Items in This Story The remaining 200 workers at the plant here will lose their jobs. “Now what're we going to do?” said Toby Savolainen, 49, who like many others worked for decades at the factory, making bulbs now deemed wasteful. During the recession, political and business leaders have held out the promise that American advances, particularly in green technology, might stem the decades-long decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. But as the lighting industry shows, even when the government pushes companies toward environmental innovations and Americans come up with them, the manufacture of the next generation technology can still end up overseas. 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. The resulting savings in energy and greenhouse-gas emissions are expected to be immense. But the move also had unintended consequences. Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China. Consisting of glass tubes twisted into a spiral, they require more hand labor, which is cheaper there. So though they were first developed by American engineers in the 1970s, none of the major brands make CFLs in the United States. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/07/AR2010090706933…. added by: DogBoy
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