Lighting Low carbon
Lighters of the 21st century face possibly the
biggest challenge of all – to slash the energy
used in the humble bulb. Carina Bailey reports
on what the industry has to do to create good
lighting with less energy
T
he key to energy efficient lighting lies in the
very lamps we use, but focusing on this alone
will not be enough to create good lighting. This
view was expressed by consultant David Loe
at the recent Society of Light and Lighting debate on
the topic. Good lighting is about more than its energy
consumption, and has three important elements
to satisfy: visual amenity, visual function and the
health of the people it serves. If any of those points
are neglected, Loe argues, the industry is failing its
customers.
At least 20 per cent of the UK’s electricity is
consumed by lighting, equating to 34m tonnes of
carbon dioxide emissions. Just over 57 per cent of this
34m tonnes is accounted for by the services sector, 13
per cent by industry, and 30 per cent by domestic use.
Loe warns that, if lighting professionals don’t think
seriously about where this energy is consumed, “silly,
limiting” decisions will be made.
Energy-efficiency technologies already available in
the UK aren’t being used to their full potential, argues
Loe. If automatic and manual lighting controls aren’t
user-friendly or do not enable individual lights to
be turned off when they should be, the system will
consume much more energy than predicted. “Unless
that’s seriously thought about in terms of the user
requirements, then it will fail,” he adds.
Households in the UK currently spend £2.4bn
Households
on lighting – about £100 per house. By 2013 it is
in the UK
anticipated that the banning of the filament bulb and
a move towards compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and
currently spend
other sources will have reduced energy use by as much
£2.4 billion
as 8,000 GWh per year, the equivalent of the electricity
on lighting –
generated by one power station.
The latest predictions suggest that, by 2020,
about £100 per
useable LEDs should have emerged and, by 2040,
house.
incandescents should be completely eradicated, with
energy consumption slashed by 90 per cent – dropping
from around 18,000 GWh a year now to around 2,000
GWh a year by the mid-2030s.
Brian Jacob, of Philips Lighting, enthuses about
the massive carbon savings that could be made using
energy-efficient light bulbs: “If [General Lighting Service
(GLS)] lamps do go it would save 156m barrels of oil a
year, which equates to 38m tonnes of carbon a year – a >
www.cibsejournal.com September 2009 CIBSE Journal 45
CIBSEsep09 pp44-46,48 lighting.indd 45 20/8/09 19:12:44
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