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Report: Repeal of Lighting Standards Would Jeopardize $12.5 Billion in Consumer Savings
Consumers in Every State Stand to Lose if Congress Derails Efficiency Standards
WASHINGTON
With Congress about to consider eliminating 2007 lighting efficiency standards before they even take effect, a new analysis shows the standards would save the country more than $12.5 billion annually when fully implemented in 2020.
Americans' energy costs would be reduced by an average of 7 percent or about $85 per household each and every year when the standards are fully in place, according to the analysis.
More efficient light bulbs also would eliminate the need for 33 large power plants - and the pollution they would generate - according to the analysis.
For the full analysis with state-by-state breakdowns of savings, please see: https://www.nrdc.org/energy/files/betterbulbs.pdf
"Clearly, consumers, the economy and the environment will suffer if these standards are repealed," said Jim Presswood, NRDC's federal energy policy director. "It also will send the wrong signal to the lighting industry, which has already started making better bulbs."
Several companies are already selling improved incandescent bulbs that meet the standards, which take effect beginning in January. The bulbs look, light and turn on just like traditional bulbs, but they're much more efficient. Consumers can save even more money with compact florescent (CFL) and light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs - but the standards do not ban or prohibit any type of light bulb.
Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, which conducted the analysis for NRDC, said all states would see significant savings from the better lighting efficiency. Some states - such as New York, Texas and California - would save more than $1 billion in energy costs each year simply from better bulbs.
"The average U.S. household would save about 7 percent on their annual electric costs - or roughly one-twelfth," deLaski said. "In other words, the savings from the lighting standards would be like getting a free month without a power bill, every single year."
NRDC works to safeguard the earth--its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends. We combine the power of more than three million members and online activists with the expertise of some 700 scientists, lawyers, and policy advocates across the globe to ensure the rights of all people to the air, the water, and the wild.
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100+ International Law Experts Say US Strikes on Iran Violate UN Charter, Could Be War Crimes
The US started a war despite "no imminent threat" from Iran and has since carried out widespread attacks against schools, hospitals, civilian homes, and energy facilities.
Apr 02, 2026
A day after President Donald Trump threatened to bomb Iran "back to the Stone Age" during a primetime speech, a group of more than 100 international law experts said US strikes over the past month of war clearly violated the United Nations Charter and may amount to war crimes.
On Thursday, Just Security released a letter signed by senior professors, law association leaders, former government advisers, military law experts, and former judge advocates general (JAGs) arguing that the US has violated international law both by launching the war alongside Israel on February 28 and through its conduct while prosecuting it since then.
"The initiation of the campaign was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter," the experts said, "and the conduct of United States forces since, as well as statements made by senior government officials, raise serious concerns about violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes."
Over 100 international lawyers (including me) warn that U.S. strikes on Iran violate the UN Charter and may be war crimes. Read the letter here:www.justsecurity.org/135423/profe...
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— Oona Hathaway (@oonahathaway.bsky.social) April 2, 2026 at 7:35 AM
The charter allows for the use of military force against other nations only in self-defense against an imminent armed attack or when authorized by the UN Security Council.
"The Security Council did not authorize the attack. Iran did not attack Israel or the United States," the experts said. "Despite the Trump administration’s varied and sometimes conflicting claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that Iran posed an imminent threat that could ground a self-defense claim."
They highlighted statements from administration officials, such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has described the rules of military engagement as "stupid" and said the US was seeking to prioritize "maximum lethality, not tepid legality."
They also mentioned the defense secretary’s pledge to give “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies” in mid-March—noting that the threat is not only “especially prohibited” under international law, but also the Department of Defense’s own war manual.
Trump himself has said explicitly that he doesn't "need international law" and suggested that the US was conducting strikes against certain Iranian infrastructure, including an oil hub, "just for fun."
This has culminated in what the experts say have been widespread violations of the laws of armed conflict, including rampant strikes against civilians and political leaders with no military role, as well as critical infrastructure like oil and other energy facilities, which the UN's high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, condemned last month for their “disastrous” impacts on civilians.
They also raised serious concerns about attacks on schools, health facilities, and homes, citing recent data from the Iranian Red Crescent, which found that at least 67,414 civilian sites have been struck, including 498 schools and 236 health facilities.
According to a report on Wednesday from the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), a US-based human rights monitor for Iran, more than 1,600 civilians have been killed since the war began on February 28, including 244 children.
The experts raised particular concern about the US bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab on the first day of the war, which killed at least 175 people, most of whom were children aged 7-12.
"The strike likely violates international humanitarian law, and if evidence is found that those responsible were reckless, it could also be a war crime," they said. "The strike is among the deadliest single attacks by the US military on civilians in recent decades."
They warned that a lack of accountability has only allowed the administration's conduct to grow more aggressive and reckless, with Trump issuing increasingly bombastic threats, including to "obliterate” Iran's power plants and water facilities and "do things that would be so bad they could literally never rebuild as a nation again.”
They also called out Hegseth's dismantling of internal safeguards meant to prevent the military from violating international law, including the removal of senior lawyers from oversight positions and the elimination of "civilian environment teams" meant to help the military understand how their operations could impact the population.
While the letter focused on violations by the US government, it also said Iran's government has committed illegal actions during the conflict, by continuing its violent crackdowns against protesters and by conducting strikes on civilian areas in Israel and the Gulf states in retaliation for the war.
The experts urged US officials to uphold international law and reminded other nations "of their legal obligations not to aid or assist the United States, Israel, or Iran in the commission of internationally wrongful acts."
The legal scholars who signed the letter joined a growing chorus of international law experts and human rights organizations that have condemned the war as illegal, including multiple UN bodies, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Human Rights First.
One of the letter's signatories, American University law professor Rebecca Hamilton, said she hoped the letter would spur action from "those with constitutional responsibilities," including the US Congress, which she said was "flailing in the face of illegal actions by the executive."
Hamilton said she was "proud to be part of this professional community, willing to come together to give voice to the rule of law."
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'A Barbaric Assault': Iran Condemns US-Israeli Bombing of Century-Old Medical Research Center
"Heartbreaking, cruel, despicable, and utterly outrageous," a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry said of the attack on the Pasteur Institute of Iran.
Apr 02, 2026
The Iranian Ministry of Health said Thursday that a US-Israeli airstrike hit and severely damaged the Pasteur Institute of Iran, a century-old medical research center that has played a key role in combating and preventing infectious diseases in the country.
Photos posted to social media by a spokesperson for Iran's Health Ministry, Hossein Kermanpour, showed flames and smoke amid the rubble of a devastated building. Kermanpour called the attack on the Pasteur Institute of Iran "a direct assault on international health security" and a violation of international law.
Esmaeil Baqaei, a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry, also condemned the attack on social media, blaming "the American-Israeli aggressors."
"Heartbreaking, cruel, despicable, and utterly outrageous," Baqaei wrote. "This is not merely another war crime committed as part of an illegal war; it is a barbaric assault on basic human core values."
Heartbreaking, cruel, despicable, and utterly outrageous: the American-Israeli aggressors have attacked the Pasteur Institute of Iran — the oldest and most prestigious research and public health center in Iran and the entire Middle East, founded in 1920 through an agreement… pic.twitter.com/DQvyiuxIw6
— Esmaeil Baqaei (@IRIMFA_SPOX) April 2, 2026
News of the attack on the medical research center, which was founded in 1920, came hours after US President Donald Trump threatened in a primetime speech Wednesday night to bomb Iran "back to the Stone Ages."
Vali Nasr, an Iranian American academic and professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, wrote Thursday that the Pasteur Institute "has been an icon of Iran's healthcare system, a symbol of modern Iran, established a century ago along with foundational health and education institutions."
"Destroying it," Nasr wrote, "could have no other purpose than assaulting Iran’s history, erasing the history of its modernization and development—take Iranians back to the Stone Age."
The attack on the Pasteur Institute comes days after the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that airstrikes hit "near WHO's office in the Iranian capital, Tehran, shattering windows."
"Strikes impacting the operations and damaging the premises of WHO and other UN agencies, the locations of which have been clearly identified, cannot be tolerated and must be avoided at all costs," Tedros said in a statement.
Since the start of the deadly US-Israeli bombing onslaught on February 28, the WHO has documented more than two dozen attacks on healthcare infrastructure and personnel in Iran—part of a broader assault on healthcare that Trump's Iran War has unleashed throughout the Middle East.
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Golden Dome as a Leaky Golden Shower: Trump's $4 Trillion Missile Defense System Ridiculed in DC
"This is not defense, it's deception—an illusion of safety. The Pentagon has spent hundreds of billions of dollars over the last several decades proving that this freaking thing doesn't work."
Apr 02, 2026
Critics of the 'Golden Dome' missile defense shield program championed by US President Donald Trump gathered on the National Mall in Washington, DC on Wednesday to ridicule and condemn the wasteful military program, which experts warn will never work as promised but will plow billions of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of the weapons industry.
Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and found of the anti-war group Up In Arms, led the event which included the unveiling of an art installation—complete with a statue of Trump holding a golden umbrella filled with holes, urinating missiles, and running water—to represent the "unworkable space shield" known as the Golden Dome, a space-based missile defense shield that varying studies estimate could cost from $540 billion to a mind-blowing $6 trillion over 20 years to operate.
With the DC event taking place on April 1, Cohen told those gathered that the problem with the Golden Dome is that "it's not a prank," but rather a real program that Trump is trying pursue despite its deep and obvious flaws.
"Sure, you know, an invisible shield that protects you from any possible threat, is a nice idea," said Cohen, "but it's full of holes."
"This is not defense, it's deception—an illusion of safety," Cohen continued. "The Pentagon has spent hundreds of billions of dollars over the last several decades proving that this freaking thing doesn't work, but it's just such an attractive fantasy that it's being pulled out of the trash bins of history to soak the taxpayer once again."
"It's another one of the harebrained ideas that pops out of our president's head every now and then, but the Hole-in-Dome [statue] demonstrates that he's all wet on this one," said Cohen. "The other thing the Hole-in-Dome demonstrates is that our country is under water—we are drowning in debt. And wasting another $4 trillion on a holey dome ain't gonna help, especially when we need that money for Social Security, affordable housing, and healthcare."
The overall message, he said, was that "if we don't stop this boondoggle, we're sunk."
Dr. Igor Moric, a research physicist at the Princeton Program on Science and Global Security, also spoke at the event, explaining how the Golden Dome system—despite Trump's unfounded claims that it will be able to shield the American people from future ballistic missile attacks—runs up against fundamental scientific limits.
“The United States has been building ballistic missile defense, a magical shield against nuclear weapons for over 80 years,” Moric said. “The reality is ballistic missile defense does not work, it cannot work, and it will not work. Space-based missile defense, as envisioned by the Golden Dome, cannot work because of known physical and technological realities limiting what it can do."
According to the Up In Arms website, "Golden Dome would be an enormously expensive system that would not provide an effective defense. It would instead fuel an arms race that would reduce US and international security, and increase the risk of nuclear war."
Dr. Ira Helfand, co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Back from the Brink campaign, noted that even "optimistic scenarios" of success by a Golden Dome system would not prevent catastrophic consequences, warning that even if the system could intercept 80% of incoming weapons, tens of millions of Americans could still be killed in a large-scale nuclear attack.
“This system does not protect the American people,” he says. “The attempt to build this system will fuel the arms race and torpedo efforts to actually get rid of [nuclear] weapons."
Other speakers focused on the need to use precious tax dollars not for unrealistic and unworkable weapons like Golden Dome, but rather to invest in social programs—including education, Social Security, healthcare, and affordable housing—that the nation desperately needs.
“The Golden Dome is not golden for the people of the United States or the world,” said former Ohio state senator Nina Turner, who also spoke at the event.
People in Cleveland and other US cities, Turner said, would “much rather have the money that is being wasted on a pipe dream and a fantasy invested in lifting them and their children out of poverty.”
“There is a connection between this foolishness and folly and the reason we can't have nice things in the United States of America," added Turner. "They tell us they can't afford universal healthcare, but they can afford this!"
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