LED ENVIRONMENT
GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
SEE COMPLETE GOING GREEN 100 LIST
White LED technologies have the potential to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, reduce global warming, reduce acid rain, eliminate the need for over 30 electrical power plants, and reduce the 32 ton annual US consumption of mercury for fluorescent lighting. Sounds too good to be true?
These incredible benefits are actually achievable over the next 10 years by aggressively developing and deploying White LEDs. On its current trajectory, White LED technology will achieve efficiencies 12 times greater than incandescent and 2 times greater than fluorescent with device lifetimes 100 to 1000 times greater than their glass cousins. While these represent stretch goals, major headway can be made at the local, regional, national, and global levels.
These gains are possible because LED directly fights these wastes:
- 21% of all energy (oil, gas, coal, nuclear) goes to lighting.
- 30%, the largest single category, of all electricity is consumed by lighting.
- 7% of the 463 tons of mercury used annually, or 32 tons is used to make high efficiency fluorescent lighting.
And produces environmentally sound benefits:
- Reduction of $125 billion spending on electricity over the period 2005-2025
- 50% reduction in electricity use for lighting
- 30% reduction in total electricity production a savings of 3.5 quadrillion BTUs Elimination of approximately 115 million metric tons of carbon emissions and over 1 million tons in combined nitrous and sulfur dioxide emissions annually
