Environmental Impact of Efficient Lighting

By Diana Grant

www.lightingdesignlab.com

Saving lighting energy means more than just a reduction in your building's operating costs. It also means reducing your impact on the planet. Here are some of the ways lighting improvements reduce the load on the environment.

Air pollution reductions: Seattle City Light estimates 1200 pounds of CO2 are saved for every megawatt hour of lighting savings. One megawatt hour is 1,000 kilowatt hours.

• Estimated achievable savings regionwide in 20 years in commercial lighting = 3,066,000 megawatt hours. Potential CO2 savings is 1,839,000 tons.
• Estimated achievable savings regionwide in 20 years in residential lighting = 4,642,800 megawatt hours. Potential CO2 savings is 2,785,680 tons.

Mercury:
It only takes 24 broken fluorescent lamps to pollute the fish in a 20 acre lake. This makes proper lamp disposal and using low-mercury lighting products very important. Average mercury content has been reduced in lamps from 45 milligrams in 1988 to less than 3 milligrams today. EPA regulations make it illegal to improperly dispose of mercury-containing products. Do you recycle your spent fluorescent lamps? If not, check the laws in your community.

Cradle to Cradle:
What is the environmental impact of your lighting choices? Do your manufacturer choices make environmentally responsible choices when manufacturing and shipping? What are the pollution costs of shipping your luminaires, lamps and ballasts-do they come from 250 miles away or 12,000? Fuel and air pollution costs for shipping half a world away can be enormous. T5HO systems use much less material and weigh less, reducing shipping impacts, and the future impact on landfills.