Switching to Better Light Sources

Submitted by: Tommy Groza, Lewis and Clark Hight School, Spokane, WA
October 25, 2020

A big problem that contributes to energy loss and pollution is lights. About 30% of outdoor light goes unused and that adds up to a $3.3 billion loss and 21 million tons of carbon dioxide being released every year. Just to make up for that, we would have to plant 875 million trees annually. https://www.darksky.org/light-pollution/energy-waste/

A very easy and efficient thing that can be done to be more environmentally friendly is switch to LED lights. On average, normal electric light bulbs last 1200 hours and they are 1$ per bulb. However, if you calculate the cost of energy from using electric bulbs, it would cost $4275 for 25 bulbs. If you were to use LED light, it would cost $5 per bulb but each bulb would last 25000 hours and the total cost including electricity would only be $656.25 for 25 bulbs compared to the $4275 of electric bulbs. Not only are LED lights cheaper in the long run, they are also better lights and more environmentally friendly. LED lighting resembles natural lighting better. https://learn.eartheasy.com/guides/led-light-bulbs-comparison-charts/

The main reason that LEDs use so much less electricity than incandescent lighting is that they don’t produce light in the same way. Incandescent lights pass electricity through a filament that must get extremely hot for its atoms’ electrons to become excited enough to give off light. Most incandescent bulbs waste about 90% of the electricity they consume as heat because of this, making them incredibly inefficient light producers. LEDs, such as the popular LED recessed fixtures that easily replace incandescent fixtures, produce light using electroluminescence. This process doesn’t use a filament and creates little heat, instead relying on a property of semiconductors to generate light. It is thus far more efficient at converting electricity into light.

That efficiency is what enables LEDs to produce the same amount of light as the bulbs that LED recessed fixtures would be replacing, while consuming so little power. Of course, the fact that LEDs don’t waste energy by creating or relying on excess heat is also part of what makes them so safe, as well as why they don’t need the large, fragile glass bulbs full of toxic gasses that make handling other lighting sources more difficult. http://www.88light.com/?route=qanda40

Currently, LED lights are supposed to be 6 1% of the global lighting market by the end of 2020. This is very good because that means that more and more businesses are going to switching to LED and hopefully it becomes standardized in the near future. https://www.statista.com/topics/1144/led-lighting-in-the-us/#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20LEDs%20are%20estimated,of%20the%20global%20lighting%20market