His stockpile is the fruit of a frenzied shopping spree. For weeks, he spent many of his waking hours on the phone and online tracking down vendors and snapping up incandescent bulbs. The buying binge was necessary, he said, to beat a ban by the European Union.

As of Sept. 1, the manufacture and import of 100-watt incandescent bulbs have been outlawed within the EU, to be followed by bulbs of lesser wattage in coming years. Once current stocks are gone, incandescent bulbs will join Thomas Edison in the history books.

The ban is part of the EU's effort against global warming. The object is to encourage people to switch from energy-wasting incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent lamps, which last longer and are up to 75 percent more efficient.

For EU officials, it's all about the math. Ditching the older bulbs, they say, will save 40 billion kilowatt-hours a year by 2020 - equal to the output of 10 power stations.

The United States is to begin phasing them out in the next few years.

But not everyone considers it such a bright idea.

Dissenters have sprung up across the Continent, people who complain that fluorescent lamps are inferior, cost more, and pose their own environmental problems.

Art galleries fret over how best to display their works without the warm glow of incandescent bulbs. A petition to save the conventional bulb is circulating on the Internet.

"There's been quite a bit of consumer backlash," said Peter Hunt, chief executive of Britain's Lighting Association.

To help consumers and manufacturers get used to the change, the EU decided not to ax all incandescents at once.

The ban from September covers only clear bulbs of 100 watts and frosted ones of all wattages. Clear incandescent lamps of 60 and 40 watts are to be eased out by September 2012.

The advantages of the ban outweigh any deficiencies, EU officials say. Good-quality fluorescent bulbs can last years, far longer than conventional bulbs, so while they cost more, they are more economical in the long run.

The new lamps also save on electricity costs because of their more efficient use of energy. In conventional bulbs, most of the energy is lost as heat rather than converted to light.

Then how to explain that low-energy fluorescent lamps have been around for 25 years but have never caught on with ordinary consumers?

"The early ones were the size of large jam jars, they flickered, they had a cold blue light, and they took a long time to switch on," Hunt said. The technology has improved considerably, Hunt said.

None of that matters to Ziegler. Months before the Sept. 1 deadline, he went through every room of his apartment with a floor plan, marking an X wherever there was a light fixture and noting what kind of bulb it required. His local vendor worked out how many bulbs Ziegler would need for the next decade. "I said forget 10 years," Ziegler recalled. "I want a lifetime supply."