Lighting
Indoor Environmental Quality and lighting
The Lighting Industry Association (LIA) is supporting the call to scale up renovation across Europe and working hard to make sure it includes lighting. Renovation is at the heart of the European Green Deal and has been identified as a key driver for the European social and economic recovery post-COVID-19. There cannot and should not be any renovation of buildings in Europe without upgrading the lighting installations. Lighting is essential to making a building more energy efficient but also to ensure an adequate Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ).
T
he EU’s political commitment is backed up by financial support also. The Commission proposes to reinforce the EU 2021-2027 budget by making available an additional 750
Billion Euros under the new Next Generation EU financial instrument. Given the relatively labour-intensive nature of renovation and the fact that it matches the “green, digital and resilient” ambition of the Commission recovery package, the document outlining the European Commission’s proposals talks of regulatory and financial support to “at least double the annual renovation rate of existing building stock”. A strategic communication on the Renovation Wave initiative and an action plan with concrete measures to deploy faster and deeper renovation is expected in the autumn. The EU acknowledges the benefits of renovation: “cutting emissions,
reducing energy consumption, and lowering household bills, safer healthier building and improving people’s quality of life. It also acknowledges that an investment in renovation will create jobs and benefit the local economy.” Some 75% of existing European buildings remain energy inefficient (and
were constructed before legislation on building performance was in place). It is estimated that 80% of today’s buildings will still be in use by 2050 and that only 1% (on average) of buildings currently undergo renovations each year.
ewnews.co.uk
Lighting contributes to Indoor Environmental Quality Many perceive Lighting mainly as a driver for energy efficiency. This indeed remains one of the core values for the lighting industry, and the now mostly accomplished transition to LED technology has led to up to 90% savings for European consumers. The implementation of a comprehensive light management system will save 20 to 29 TWh per year as of 2030 (Lot 37 Ecodesign Lighting Systems). However, the benefits from lighting for the health, well-being,
productivity, and safety of people are rarely seen as added value. At best, they come for free as part of the energy savings. These benefits received more attention in 2017, when three biologists were awarded the Nobel Prize for helping to explain how the human circadian rhythm works, including how light affects our daily biological cycle. With the EU Renovation Wave initiative, the discussion must move
beyond energy savings to also address healthier buildings, people’s quality of life and a lower level of inconvenience. We spend 90% of our time indoors and the quality of our indoor environment has a direct and indirect impact on our health, well-being, and productivity. But so far for most people quality is limited to heating & cooling and
ventilation. The importance of good indoor air quality, for instance, is well known. The WHO relates ambient and household air pollution to a high number of premature deaths worldwide, and the term “air quality” is often
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