Light Bulb Ethics: Save Energy, Save Money, Save the Climate

 The incandescent light bulb won't be around much longer. In just about a year, more than half a billion people in almost 30 nations around the globe will say goodbye to the old light bulb.  European Union Energy Ministers joined Australia, the Philippines and Cuba last week when it completed plans to make the sale of incandescent light bulbs illegal in Europe by 2010.

The massive light bulb switch is part of an ambitious energy policy to fight climate change. The U.S. plans to do the ethical and smart thing by joining them (now that we've admitted there is such a thing as climate change and that it's not good) by banning the incandescent light bulb beginning 2012 and phasing out through 2014.

The incandescent is an energy-inefficient light bulb and although its successors are more expensive initially, the more efficient lights will be cheaper in the long run as they use significantly less energy and last longer. Incandescents convert heat into light and are extremely lazy-- using only two percent of the electricity they consume and wasting the rest. When you think how lighting accounts for almost one quarter of the world's electricity use, the possible energy savings are massive.

"The prospect of converting those savings into profits has encouraged a clutch of companies to commercialize cutting-edge lighting technologies," writes William Pentland in Forbes. The profits are huge in a lighting market that is massive in both scale and scope. The U.S. spends some $58 billion annually on a variety of lighting systems -- from desk lamps and exit signs to traffic lights and colored Christmas lights.  

The biggest share of next-generation lighting applications are based on light-emitting  diodes, or LEDs, which produce light by channeling electricity through a semiconductor chip that converts electrons into photons, or electricity into light.

The photographs illustrating this post are LED lamps, actually one-of-a-kind crystal LED lamps, by young Dutch designer Pieke Bergmans.Not your usual LED lights, Bergmans calls her LED lamps "light blubs." To see how her light sculptures are created, with photos of the process go to her website. 

 

By Sharon McEachern