Change Your Lighting

The climate crisis is real and happening right now. It’s easy to feel helpless and overwhelmed. People are asking, “What difference will changing my light bulbs really make? The problem is so huge, and I’m just one person.”

Lighting

Lighting accounts for about 21 percent of commercial energy consumption and about 12 percent of home energy consumption. In terms of heat-trapping pollution, that means the lights in the average household produce just over a ton of carbon dioxide each year. If every household replaced just three 60-watt incandescent bulbs with CF bulbs, the pollution savings would be like taking 3.5 million cars off the road!

Here are a few steps to lower those numbers:

• Use energy-efficient lights. If you change just one 75-watt bulb to a compact fluorescent light, it roughly cuts 1,300 pounds of global warming pollution. They also last up to 15 times as long and save you money. (Learn how to pick the best bulbs.)

• Turn off lights. A large part of lighting expenses is from rooms that stay unnecessarily lit.

• Use natural light. Open your shades and use sunlight to help light rooms.

• Install motion-sensors so that lights automatically turn on when someone is in the room and turn off when empty. Convenience is a plus.
  

Better than regular bulbs

Until the last decade, LEDs could only produce green, red, and yellow light, which limited their use. Then came blue LEDs, which have since been altered to emit white light with a light-blue hue.

LEDs produce twice as much light as a regular 60 watt bulb and burn for over 50,000 hours. The Department of Energy estimates LED lighting could reduce U.S. energy consumption for lighting by 29 percent by 2025. LEDs don't emit much heat, so they're also more energy efficient. And they're much harder to break.

Other scientists have said they expect LEDs to eventually replace standard incandescent bulbs as well as fluorescent and sodium vapor lights.

If the new process can be developed into commercial production, light won't come just from newfangled bulbs. Quantum dot mixtures could be painted on just about anything and electrically excited to produce a rainbow of colors, including white.