How “Green” is LED Lighting?
Energy Efficient and Environmentally Safe LED Lighting
Whether you’re a municipal official researching outdoor LED landscape lighting for a park in your town, or a Vice President of a corporation planning an energy efficient lighting schema, you’ve probably heard a lot of “good things” about LEDs. But how much of the discussion is hype? How much actual research and science can back up the now-conventional belief that LED lighting = “green lighting”?
A lot, actually. The hype is true.
First off, unlike CFL lights, LEDs don’t have mercury in them — mercury is a heavy metal (and a pollutant) that’s somewhat dangerous to produce and ship.
Second, LEDs last a long time and consume far less electricity than other types of lighting. This means that they are “green” on many fronts. Obviously, since they use less electricity, they put less burden on power plants. However, the scale of the improvement is what’s truly staggering. Effectively, a single LED bulb can last as long as fifty 1,000 hour incandescent bulbs. This not only helps the environment, but it also leads to less maintenance “process waste.”
Imagine how much it costs you (including environmental impact) to hire maintenance crews to come out 50 different times over the next several years to replace and change out old bulbs. What if you didn’t have to invest in that maintenance work at all?
The U.S. Department of Energy has gotten on board and has estimated that, in just a decade and a half, the advent of LED lighting will slash energy demands by over 60%, prevent the expulsion of 260 million metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere and eliminate the need for over 130 power plants.
LEDs are also far more energy efficient; traditional bulbs waste around 90% of the energy they get as heat. Many LEDs only waste 20% of the energy they get as heat.
Planning Your Green Outdoor Lighting Project in Nevada or California
To understand how LEDs might fit into your project plans, get in touch with the team here at Great Basin Lighting for a conversation about your outdoor LED lighting project and its requirements. Give us a call today at 925-240-1566 (California) or 775-333-0900 (Nevada) or use our online contact form located right here on our website.