An alliance made up both of governments and multinational companies will see billions of energy efficient LED bulbs rolled out in an attempt to cut down on global carbon emissions.
13 world governments, including China, India, the UK and the US agreed to team up with companies including Philips and IKEA for the project that has the aim of reducing lighting based global emissions by some 5%. The project involves selling vastly increased numbers of LED light bulbs that are much more energy efficient than their traditional counterparts.
Currently, more energy is consumed globally by lighting than is produced by all of the world’s nuclear power plants put together, making up 15% of all of the energy used worldwide. This figure is expected to rise by around 50% over the next 15 years, making the need to use more efficient lighting an imperative.
If all of the lighting used worldwide was instantly switched over to LED systems, global emissions of carbon would drop by 735 million tonnes – equivalent to the output of more than 200 coal-fired plants. Of course, the transition will not be instant but rate at which consumption is growing, particularly with the 1.2 billion people who currently lack electricity get access to it, it is more important than ever to start moving down the right path right away.
Swedish owned furniture giant Ikea have already switched over their whole range of lighting to LEDs earlier this year and as part of the new alliance’s plans, have pledged to sell around 500 million over the next 5 years.
Furthering their philanthropy, Ikea have also promised to donate 1 euro towards a plan to give refugees access to sustainable lighting sources for every LED bulb sold.
As always, a large part of this new plan will involve balancing up environmental imperatives with affordability, and that had always been a barrier for eco-friendly lighting, given how cheap conventional bulbs were in comparison.
Even now, with prices having dropped considerably, LED bulbs are around twice the price of traditional bulbs, something that deters many customers despite their 20 year lifespan making them actually much better value for money.
However, Ikea have noticed dramatic increase in sales after steadily cutting prices for LED bulbs over the few years.
Steve Howard, chief sustainability officer at Ikea, said that “a year or two ago, people were still used to paying 50p for a light bulb so they didn’t get the value proposition. But 18 months ago, we suddenly got to the price point where there was a massive response from our customers and sales took off.”
Sweden’s government are also fully behind the whole project, with the country’s energy minister explaining that “Sweden wants to support the transition to universal access of high-efficiency and high-quality lighting, which is why we join this race with other Clean Energy Ministerial partners to realise the efficiency potential that exists in Sweden and the rest of the world.”
Among the countries committing to roll out increased numbers of LED bulbs are India, who have committed to selling 0.8 billion by 2018 and China, who promised to sell 5 billion by the year 2019.
The US, who are also part of the alliance, have already reported that over the last 2 years, sales for LED bulbs have gone up by around six times.
