See the light!

satch · Jun 29, 2006

Extracts from a report on the BBC web site:

Lighting the key to energy saving

A global switch to efficient lighting systems would trim the world's electricity bill by nearly one-tenth. That is the conclusion of a study from the International Energy Agency (IEA), which it says is the first global survey of lighting uses and costs.

The carbon dioxide emissions saved by such a switch would, it concludes, dwarf cuts so far achieved by adopting wind and solar power.

Better building regulations would boost uptake of efficient lighting, it says.

"Lighting is a major source of electricity consumption," said Paul Waide, a senior policy analyst with the IEA and one of the report's authors.

"19% of global electricity generation is taken for lighting - that's more than is produced by hydro or nuclear stations, and about the same that's produced from natural gas," he told the BBC News website.

The carbon dioxide produced by generating all of this electricity amounts to 70% of global emissions from passenger vehicles, and is three times more than emissions from aviation, the IEA says.

Not many inventions last for more than 100 years without major modifications.

The incandescent light bulb, developed a century and a quarter ago by luminaries including Sir Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison, is one, and still produces almost half of the light used in homes around the world.

But incandescent bulbs are very inefficient, converting only about 5% of the energy they receive into light.

The biggest consumer is the fluorescent tube. Commercial and public sector buildings account for 43% of the electricity used for lighting; and here, fluorescents dominate.

The report notes that the efficiency of tubes can vary widely, between about 15% and 60%.

Regulations on their use vary widely too. Health and safety concerns dictate what light levels should be achieved in various buildings, but the IEA found the levels prescribed by regulatory authorities vary by a factor of 20 from one country to another.

The IEA reserves particular ire for that favourite of the western middle-class lounge, the halogen uplighter.

"This... is the least efficient of all commonly used electric lighting systems," it says. "They add a large amount of heat into the living space as a by-product... this heat might require additional air-conditioning energy for its removal."

It is concerned too that a significant proportion of the world's population has no access to electric lighting at all. Instead they rely on burning fuel, which is expensive, inefficient, produces poor light quality and contributes to respiratory disease.

Energy-efficient lighting can seem such an obviously good idea that it is hard to comprehend why it is not used everywhere.

"The overall cost of 10,000 hours of light provision from incandescents is 85 euros," said Paul Waide, "but for CFLs it's 25 euros, because they use so much less energy, and because you might have to buy only one CFL for every 10 incandescents."

He acknowledged there were concerns about the quality of light coming from some CFLs, and that some consumers reported lower lifetimes than manufacturers claimed; the key here, he said, is better regulation of the product sector by governments.

"There is also a lot that governments could do to reduce the price differential between CFLs and incandescents; it's extremely efficient from a societal perspective."
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