You should not see everywhere the conspiracies.

It is way simpler:
With any product, there are just two, who make a big profit: The one, who come with that product first on the market before the others step in and the one, who remain the last one after the others step out.

Lamp makers did feel the incandescents going away already for few decades. The selling prices went so low, they didn't make any money on them. Normally it would be just a question time, when they will be pulling out of the incandescent business. But someone could play the gamble and keep his incandescent business alive, so when all the others went out and the incandescent would become a niche market, they could boost the prices and have some profit again, being "the last one".
But as all of the major makers are quite strong, they have all played that gamble for way too long (it cost them way too much) and it was obvious no one will give up anytime soon. Moreover with China behind the door, the prospect of long time profit of the "last one" didn't seem to be as promising either. So instead of normally giving up, they in fact formed a trust (normally a criminal activity), used the "green move" and convinced the governing id***s the ban is the best thing for the civilization. So by that they made sure, there was no winner. Well, not completely: Have you noticed the ban left there a backdoor? The "special purpose" category means they can still continue - and with a good excuse to bring the selling prices back up...

For few major players it was not the first time they formed a trust and keep it formally legal by "protecting against a global danger"...

I am sorry that some of you have had CFL issues and LED issues. LEDs & CFLs lasts longer than incandescents. I saved money there and my electric bills have been hapilly lowered and that I didn't have to buy light bulbs much as I used to. It also seems like people rather throw products in trash instead of recycling them. I prefer to recycle recyclable stuff instead of putting recyclable stuff in trash. Their is a time that we need to conserve energy.

Brendda75, I am sorry that you had CFL issues.

All opinions are accepted friends from what I just troubleshooted.

I guess no one want to ban the CFL's, nor LED's, so prevent you from using them if you are satisfied (by the way personally I do not use for lighting any single incandescent either - all are either fluorescents, or some LED's), but the opposition here is against banning the incandescent, so an act, which does not allow to use the incandescents by anyone, who is just not satisfied with either of the energy efficient alternatives and prefers the incandescents even when they are way more expensive in the long run.

It is hardly a conspiracy (Agenda 21 being the most well known, but there are others), as they have been talking about these things for some time.  With regards to population, we will peak at around 9,000,000,000 in mid century and decline thereafter.

As far as I'm concerned, nothing makes an arbitrary ban reasonable unless there is a like-for-like alternative, i.e. more efficient, less wasteful with respect to total amount and composition of materials (which usually end up in landfill), more economical regarding purchase cost vs. operating hours .. and which will perform the same in all existing and currently available fixtures and fittings. Dimming is also important in some applications .. and I mean the ability to dim right down to negligible light levels.

LED retrofits fail in several if not all of these aspects in many existing installations.

With regard to material these are not just a bit of glass, tungsten and aluminium, but a number of complex components being manufactured using a variety of processes then shipped across the planet, lasting maybe 6-10K hours then being scrapped rather than repaired (also counting the additional waste generated by replacing fittings simply to use these). Even if the LED lamps cost only 6-10 times that of an incandescent there is still no justification due to the unavoidable material waste. Recycling, even if carried out, also incurrs energy costs from collection and transportation to re-processing and then more transportation.

They are also currently unsuitable for the purposes they would otherwise be best suited for such as enclosed fittings outdoors or in bathrooms etc. where access is more difficult and reliability is most important.

Remember that the people who buy these today are also more likely to change them for something else when it comes along well before the rated life .. who is really going to keep the same lighting system for the often advertised 25 years ..? People redecorate, move things round, change their mind about the lighting ..

In the increasing number of areas served by "green" energy sources such as hydro-electricity, solar, wind etc. the supposed benefits are reduced even further.

In cooler climates the heat from incandescent lighting also offsets that which is otherwise delivered mainly by fossil fuel sources regardless of the method of electricity generation. I for one am more likely to turn on my 2KW electric heater or burn paraffin or gas if I don't have the option of using a couple of 100W incandescents in my ceiling lights!


BG

In the increasing number of areas served by "green" energy sources such as hydro-electricity, solar, wind etc. the supposed benefits are reduced even further.

Except the water wit a reasonable sized reservoir, the "green" energy does not work: It is available usually when not needed, so the only thing it does is to destabilize the network.
The water generation from reservoirs is the only renewable energy that really works to save the emissions, as it is able to cover the peak demand upon request, so efficiency is in fact double or even higher, just because it is very easily manageable to stabilize the network. A task, for which you otherwise need in a coal plant the boiler to be kept heated, but do not generate any (or very little) electricity.
The uncontrollable wind and solar require the opposite: To stabilize the grid, you have to operate more of the generation capacity in that wasteful stabilization mode, so even when the actual power is generated from the wind or sun, the coal plants still have to consume fuel and so emit pollution.

Los Angeles and New York is likely working on LED streetlights

http://gizmodo.com/led-streetlights-will-change-hollywood-and-make-every-c-1514840416

And all LED fixtures will come back to bite them in the squishy bits good and hard when the whole fixture requires replacement at LED or driver EOL.  This LED mania is yet another stupid industry fad that will have lasting consequences when people come to their senses and rediscover why lamps are replaceable and have been so for only the entire history of electric lighting.
The problem is that this rediscovery will only happen after billions of dollars or pounds or euros has been misallocated in high efficiency rubbish that will have to be scrapped as it is not up to the task.  HPS and linear fluorescent lamps that have service lives in excess of 80,000 hours exist and properly designed mercury lamps can last over 100,000 hours.  And there should be few problems applying such improved electrode designs that make such long lives possible to LPS lamps (one very efficient lamp type that is getting the short end of the stick).  And even the humble incandescent lamp has its place in the realm of street lighting.
As such, there is no point in sticking delicate LEDs and their comparably fragile drive electronics in places where fixtures should be expected to last decades.

The idea of replaceable lamp and ballast looks nice at first glance. But after a while you will find out, than one of the most problematic part of the lanterns, so the part causing about half of the unplanned outages today is the socket (cycling or completely dead lanterns). The second half goes mainly for the lantern housing (corrosion, so consequent failures of the other components), only then lamps, wiring, and ballast (assume a primary fault, not as a consequence of other faults). If the lamps wouldn't be designed to be replaceable in the field (but only in the shop, so e.g. with sufficient amount of screws in the sealing instead of a flimsy clip or so), the problems with the socket and lantern housing would be gone.
The life of present HPS and/or MV lamps is already so long, they are not anymore a source of problems. With MV's was quite common within the lighting maintenance organisations a directive requiring all nonworking lanterns to be completely replaced and then serviced inside a well equipped shop, because the experience was, even when the symptoms would suggest just a dead lamp, mostly it was just a consequence of other, not so visible failure (usually because the lantern design engineer assumed only the lamp would be failing and have to be replaced).

So from that perspective when the LED fixture is made really decently enclosed and so repairable only in the shop, I would expect way less field failures, because the most problematic components would not have to be used (lamp sockets loosing contact, "easy access" doors leaking water, dust and insects and so on).
In my eyes this enclosed construction should have been already used for already few decades with HID's like HPS and mainly MV's: The 4 year lamp life is just time for the lantern to be thoroughly cleaned, inspected and renewed (sealing, paint, optical elements,...). The real quality lamp life of few months (as was the case for the incandescents, early HID's or so) really requiring easy and quick relamping is not true for really many decades, yet the fixture are still designed like the lamps would have to be replaced each 3000 hours...

And for the LPS: The high efficacy of a LPS is just a myth in the reality. Indeed, when measuring the lamp alone, the efficacy appear the highest. But most of those lamps need a ballast, which in the magnetic form looses about 20% of the power, the electronic being better in that aspect. But that is by far not enough for what an efficient street lighting actually needs, the large lamp size practically does not allow any accurate beam shaping, so you end up with brightest spots of ~10x higher illumination level than the darkest spots (assume 6m poles 24m spaced, illuminating 6m wide road), so that mean a need for about 5x more lumens than the hypothetical minimum, so the minimum required illumination level multiplied by the road surface area between two poles. With LED you may easily design an optics, where just 1.5x of that hypothetical minimum is sufficient, so about 6x less lumens than the LPS. So such LED's could have alone 6x lower efficacy, yet still be on par with the LPS in the terms of the required input power.

But the efficacy is not the real point of using LPS, their strength is with fog and similar weather, where the monochromatic light give better visibility. So using LPS in Nevada's desert is rather a nonsense, but the illumination of dutch canals is far different story...

LEDs and street lighting...
I'm neither a big fan nor a hater of LEDs. I don't like the light of those few LEDs we have at home much but I find them just perfect for street lighting. Why? The only two things that really matter here is an efficiency/efficacy of the lamp/fixture and a lamp lifespan.
On the other hand, you can easily ignore worse CRI values (if it helps to make the lamp more efficient) as HPS with really poor colour rendering have been used for decades. The flicker is also not a problem (the same with most of HIDs). Directionality of LEDs is rather an advantage in most cases (except of decorative applications as illuminating trees in parks). Overheating in street lights should not occur (with exception of really hot latitudes where sun could overheat even non-burning LEDs). And glaring (for those who look directly at the light source) isn't much worse than looking at a HID.

A couple of wild ideas:

• Instead of building solar power plants - why not focus on developing powerful solar-powered street lights? If there are batteries that are small/light enough to be carried on a bike while powering it for tens of kilometers - why couldn't it be satisfactory for street lights using highly efficient LEDs? (Okay, a hybrid mode might be used in northern countries with long winter nights and a risk of covering solar panels with snow.)
• As for beneficial monochromatic properties of LPS in foggy areas - why not focus on developing really efficient yellow LEDs? If they succeeded with blue LEDs, I think it could be the same with other colours.
• And (provided they succeeded with making all LED colours highly efficient) why not make street lights from phosphorless LEDs (a mix of blue, red, green ones) thus making it even more efficient? (Again, good CRI /except of pedestrian crossings etc./ doesn't really matter here.)

Solar powered lanterns have the only benefit for some places: You do not need to dig in the feed cable. But otherwise (if the cable has to go there anyway) it is the same nonsense as the solar power plants (well, maybe even even worse due to the height,...).

For the yellow LED: The green/yellow are on an area, where both principal chemistries known for LED's become inefficient. So creating these wavelengths by phosphor conversion yield way better efficiency in generating them.

Solar powered lanterns have the only benefit for some places: You do not need to dig in the feed cable. But otherwise (if the cable has to go there anyway) it is the same nonsense as the solar power plants (well, maybe even even worse due to the height,...).

For the yellow LED: The green/yellow are on an area, where both principal chemistries known for LED's become inefficient. So creating these wavelengths by phosphor conversion yield way better efficiency in generating them.

Here is a picture of one. At 38°48'05.2"N 27°15'16.8"W you can see a street completely illuminated by them, so please don't tear my idea down simply as a nonsense.
The point is that solar power plants cause energy instability (here I do agree with you) but if you store the energy locally, this problem is gone.
Ecology/energy consumption concerns have been discussed in this topic. This is about how to make street lighting less consuming without facing known green energy problems.

And as for LEDs: In times when their sole purpose was a state indication, the idea of using them as a powerful light source might seem insane too. And since there was a demand, massive research has been accomplished and now it's a regular and powerful light source.
If there was the same demand with yellow LEDs (in order to replace SOXes at places where their properties are needed), a leap forward could be done here, too.
Many things seemed technically impossible in the past and now you have them in your mobile.

The main problem with solar energy is, without the capability to store the generated power and deliver it when needed, with present grid it's efficiency in reducing pollution is zero. And that zero will stay zero, regardless how high would be the technical efficiency of the panels alone.
And when the energy storage will be present, what would in reality reduce the emission is the energy storage and not the solar panels. The main reason is, today's grid require quite huge power generation capacity for peak power and a large stand by power generating capacity with quick response to sudden increase in demand and/or decrease in production. And the stand by means the boilers are kept heated and turbines spinning, what means the fuel is burning at about the same rate as if these would be really generating the power, but they are not. In fact it is not a separate power plant for that, but the existing power plants running at lower than peak power, so they are running less efficient than they could, if there would be no need for such response.
So only an efficient and quick response storage means reduction of such inefficient generating capacity, any unpredictable energy generation means increase of the need for such inefficient operation, so it means the emission are the same as without such uncontrollable (solar, wind,...) power generation.

So installing the solar panel and the required storage does make sense only, when it means the external connection become not needed anymore. Because it is not the energy saving, but the fact there is no need to dig any trench for the feeding cable and distribution equipment, what makes the solar lights (and even more beneficial it is with low power utility equipment like toll collecting machines, road monitoring,...) a viable configuration. The LED practical efficacy (include light beam distribution) is, indeed, what does enable this concept for street lighting.
So no energy, but installation cost savings are the motivator there. And that is the case even for the example you have posted...