Republicans have spent months raging against any government-mandated shift away from gas stoves.

All the while, the focus of a previous culture war — the incandescent lightbulb — will meet its official demise by the end of the month. Manufacturers and retailers have already been removing the inefficient bulbs from their shelves, a trend driven in large part by Energy Department rules that bar their sale.

It’s a quiet end to a political battle that had Republican lawmakers railing against federal overreach more than a decade ago.

The same kinds of fights will probably play out again and again as governments and companies look to slash the climate impact of everything from home appliances to cars, said Alex Flint, executive director of the conservative Alliance for Market Solutions.

These debates “will happen at the scale of what power plants to build. They will happen at the scale of what lightbulbs to install and everything in between,” Flint said. “There is change coming in all aspects of our energy economy, and there will be fights like this along the way.”

Recall: The fight over incandescent lightbulbs was set into motion more than a decade ago, when Congress mandated higher efficiency standards, as your Power Switch host reports.

The issue was the focus of Republican ire for years, animating tea party conservatives and GOP presidential hopefuls who accused Democrats of trying to limit consumers’ choices.

The Obama administration eventually took action in its waning days on lightbulb efficiency, only for former President Donald Trump — who once proclaimed energy-efficient bulbs made him “look orange” — to block the rule.

Under President Joe Biden, the Energy Department finalized rules last year that expanded the list of regulated bulbs and imposed an efficiency standard that Congress had set in 2007: 45 lumens per watt. A lumen is the measure of brightness for a lightbulb, while watts measure the power consumed.

A typical 60-watt incandescent bulb produces about 800 lumens, according to the Energy Department, translating into about 13 lumens per watt.

While there’s no direct ban on incandescent bulbs, experts told Brian Dabbs that most — if not all — of the products can’t meet the new efficiency standards. LED bulbs, however, can easily meet the standard with existing technology.

End of an era: The Energy Department has begun enforcing the new rules, giving retailers until this month to transition.

“This is the end of the road for most incandescent bulbs,” said Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, a group that supports energy efficiency standards.

With the rules now quietly going into force, Republicans seem to have shifted their focus toward other efficiency measures, including for gas stoves as well as dishwashers and refrigerators.

They’ll have plenty of targets as the Biden administration works through a backlog of efficiency measures as part of its plan to cut planet-warming emissions and transition off fossil fuels.

Join POLITICO on Wednesday for a conversation on the new energy economy, exploring whether climate and energy initiatives are paying off and what it will really take to reduce our energy consumption.

It’s Tuesday — thank you for tuning in to POLITICO’s Power Switch. I’m your host, Kelsey Tamborrino. Arianna will be back soon! Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. Send your tips, comments, questions to [email protected]

Today in POLITICO Energy’s podcast: Alex Guillén discusses the Biden administration’s plans for tackling methane emissions from oil and gas wells.

Democrats look for permitting Plan B

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to strengthen and finalize rules that could speed the deployment of clean energy and transmission lines, write Miranda Wilson and Kelsey Brugger.

It’s the latest example of Democrats looking for new strategies on permitting reform as prospects remain murky in Congress.

Elsewhere, climate hawk Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) is urging Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to encourage “advanced reconductoring,” a concept she’s keen on. The idea is to fix towers with new cables to boost renewables, which could be a way to avoid problems associated with environmental reviews in the permitting process.

Such executive actions mean Democrats wouldn’t have to meet Republican demands on fossil fuel deployment in a larger, bipartisan package. But there’s no guarantee the efforts would achieve Democrats’ goal of building out transmission lines to connect to renewable energy sources.

It’s a deal
UPS and the Teamsters union reached a tentative agreement Tuesday on a labor contract, reports Ariel Wittenberg. The deal includes multiple provisions to protect delivery drivers from heat exposure. It also likely averts a nationwide strike that threatened to have a multibillion-dollar impact on the U.S. economy.

Watchdog warns on Ukraine nuclear plant
Russian forces occupying Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant placed explosive mines near the facility, the chief of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency warned.

It marks the second month in a row that the U.N. atomic watchdog has reported the presence of explosives both outside and inside the perimeter of the nuclear plant, report Veronika Melkozerova and Nicolas Camut.

On the grid
Increased adoption of electric vehicles could prove beneficial for grid resilience, according to a new report, as long as the federal government and states create certainty through regulations and planning, report Zach Bright and Jason Plautz.

The Zero Emission Transportation Association found that between now and 2050, power providers will need to add 15 to 27 terawatt-hours of generation annually to keep up with an unprecedented growth in electric vehicles and an increasingly electrified economy. That’s between 0.3 and 0.6 percent of the country’s current capacity.

Looking to lithium: Oil giant Chevron is considering opportunities to produce lithium that would be used in electric vehicle batteries, its CEO Mike Wirth told Bloomberg.

Maine lines: Maine is expected to soon enact legislation to jump-start the state’s offshore wind industry. The bill, which calls for getting 3 gigawatts of electricity from offshore wind turbines by 2040, would also boost floating wind technology, given that the state’s waters are largely too deep for the fixed-bottom foundations that most offshore wind turbines currently use.

A showcase of some of our best subscriber content.

The governors of North Carolina and Virginia are on opposite sides when it comes to an extension of the Mountain Valley gas pipeline.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is backing Texas Democrat Colin Allred’s campaign to oust Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

Partisan culture wars are boiling over on House spending bills, including the bill that would fund the Interior Department.

That’s it for today, folks! Thanks for reading.