"Joke: How Many D.O.E. Workers Does It Take to ..."

"The incandescent light bulb’s days are numbered. Under federal law, the 100-watt bulbs are supposed to be taken off the shelf next year, followed later by the more common 40- and 60-watt models.

But guess who’s still using them? The Department of Energy.

As I write in The Times, the department’s inspector general released an audit on Wednesday showing that it is continuing to buy obsolete fluorescent lamps, bypassing the more modern technologies that it spent tax dollars to develop. Yet even more surprising, it is still buying the familiar incandescent bulbs in place of compact fluorescents.

The department operates at 24 sites, and the auditors visited seven of them. “Despite the substantial benefits of C.F.L.’s, all of the sites we visited continued to purchase incandescent lights,” the report said."

Matthew L. Wald reports for the New York Times July 8, 2010.