Fifteen years of political battles. Countless commentaries nationwide. Even a premature obituary.

This is what the unsuspecting incandescent light bulb has wrought.

The push to phase out the 19th-century technology to speed up use of more-efficient, longer-lasting light bulbs has spanned four presidential administrations.

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Debates raged — and that is not an overstatement — about energy savings, economics and government overreach. Laws were passed and lawsuits filed to both protect and do away with the disputed light source. Some people rushed to buy large quantities of incandescent light bulbs and hoarded them.

This may sound like a laughing matter and, to a point, it was. Surely, there were bigger concerns to expend such energy on. But serious environmental and cost issues were at stake, not to mention that a lot of people simply felt they should be able to choose what kind of light bulb they wanted.

There also were complaints that the early energy-saving bulbs weren’t all they were cracked up to be.

The latest chapter in this saga was written this week by the Biden administration, which finalized rules that will require manufacturers to sell energy-efficient light bulbs. The controversies of the past have largely faded. For some time, the industry has been shifting to compact fluorescent and LED bulbs that last up to 25 times longer than incandescent lighting and use at least 75 percent less energy, according to the Department of Energy.

After the new regulations take hold next year, the administration said consumers should save nearly $3 billion annually on utility bills, or about $100 for the average family. The shift is projected to reduce carbon emissions that warm the planet by 222 million metric tons over the next 30 years — equal to the amount of emissions generated by 28 million homes, the department says.

These days, most everyone seems to be on board. Environmentalists applauded the move, though some said it was too long in coming. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association said consumers have fully embraced improved LED lighting and called it “an unqualified success” with improvements through innovation.

Industry groups said in 2020 that only about 30 percent of light bulbs sold in the United States were incandescent or halogen incandescent bulbs.

Incandescent lights, which have been around since the 1800s, heat a wire filament to a specific temperature that then generates light, according to a description on the Light Bulbs Unlimited website. Most of the energy results in heat, not light. The wire is surrounded by a glass bulb that is usually filled with an inert gas.

LED, or light emitting diodes, wastes less energy because it produces little heat. Also, LED emits light directionally, rather than 360 degrees like incandescent. The website says that further “saves energy because (light) is focused on a certain degree instead of creating more energy for the entire 360 degrees.”

Like so many things, the fight over incandescent bulbs became partisan. It didn’t start out that way. The Energy Efficiency and Security Act of 2007, signed by Republican President George W. Bush, set evolving higher energy standards that incandescent bulbs increasingly couldn’t meet, even though they weren’t actually banned.

In 2011, House Republicans pushed legislation to scuttle the standards. The regulations were expanded under Democratic President Barack Obama, but in 2014 the Republican-controlled Senate cut funding to enforce the standards.

In 2019, President Donald Trump reversed the standards, the next wave of which was to kick in at the beginning of 2020.

Dan Brouillette, Trump’s energy secretary at the time, said the move was “to protect consumer choice by ensuring that the American people do not pay the price for unnecessary overregulation from the federal government.”

At a White House meeting in December of that year, Trump said, “The new bulb is many times more expensive, and I hate to say it, it doesn’t make you look as good,” according to The New York Times. At a subsequent event, he said, “We’re bringing back the old light bulb.”

This was similar to Trump’s criticism of low-flow toilets and shower heads, which he maintained did not work well, and appeared part of his overall efforts to scrap Obama’s environmental regulations.

Critics said dropping the light bulb standards would lead to higher energy bills and more pollution.

“The Trump administration is trying to protect technology that was first invented in the 1800s,” Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, told National Public Radio in 2019. “It’s like trying to protect the horse and buggy from the automobile technology. It makes no sense to go back to technology from two centuries ago, when we have new technology today which saves consumers money and helps protect the environment by reducing the amount of power that we need.”

While light bulb manufacturers supported Trump’s action on incandescent bulbs, the industry was well on its way to transitioning to LEDs and other energy-efficient alternatives. After Trump’s rollback, California adopted its own light bulb standards that withstood a legal challenge from the industry.

However, Trump’s complaints resonated with some people (though perhaps not specifically regarding how LED lights made them look). At least early on, there was criticism that LED bulbs cost too much, weren’t bright enough and didn’t last as long as touted.

They have improved on all those fronts. The energy-saving bulbs still tend to be more expensive than incandescent bulbs, but the gap has lessened. Experts say savings on utility bills over the longer life of LED bulbs more than makes up for the difference.

In any case, it does seem the end is finally near for the incandescent light bulb. But you never know.

In a whimsical obituary for CNN, journalist Josh Levs wrote about how the traditional light bulb would “exit gracefully, making way for the next generation.”

Actually, the incandescent bulb hasn’t gone so gently into the night. The obit was published in 2013.

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