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American Lighting Association | 7 members’ interests has led to a number of successes in influencing policies. A recent example was in California when the state re- vised their Title 24 bill, otherwise known as the Residential Energy Code. “We were fully involved with that. We made comments and we went to Sacramento and testified,” he says. As part of that energy code, there is a new proposal that will mandate specifications for a new, high efficiency screw-in LED light bulb. California wants to increase the num- ber of homes using energy-efficient lighting, and the association will be making recom- mendations to the state government on the required specifications. “To them that means they want to take the existing sockets everybody has in their homes and make them more energy-efficient,” he says. “But they’ve been unable to do that be- cause the penetration rate of energy-efficient products in California, and throughout the U.S., is only 20 to 30 percent.” LIGHTING FOR TOMORROW The other key focus forThe American Light- ing Association is their educational train- ing program. As members complete certain tasks, they earn advanced designation titles, including Lighting Associate (LA), Lighting Specialist (LS), Certified Lighting Manufac- turers’ Representative (CLMR) and Certi- fied Lighting Consultant (CLC®). The association also hosts an annual con- ference attended by more than 500 of the residential lighting industry’s leaders. It is here they annually award winning lighting fixtures through a program called Lighting