Saving the Environment

Lighting's Impact on the Environment

In the United States, lighting involves 22% of all electricity demand. According to the Clinton Global Climate Initiative, streetlights alone account for the third largest use of power in local governments. By using new LED technology and centralized lighting control systems, Senergy USA can reduce energy use up to 70 percent! With nearly 35 million street lights in the United States, about 1 percent of all electricity is used by street lighting systems.

In Los Angeles, a city retrofitting all its conventional street lighting with LEDs, currently uses 168 gigawatt hours of electricity on conventional lighting at an annual cost of $15 million, while emitting 120,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. Once the complete LED installation is complete, totaling about 140,000 streetlights, the city will benefit from an energy savings of about 40-percent and reduce carbon emissions by 40 tons per year. (1) According to President Bill Clinton, "this is like taking 6,000 cars off the road. If every major city followed Los Angeles' lead, we could eliminate 2 1/2 coal-fired power plants." This change from conventional street lighting is expected to save the city $48 million and reduce carbon emissions by 197,000 tons over a seven year period. (2) In a recent study by The Department of Energy, they've estimated that LEDs could reduce national energy consumption for lighting by 29% by 2025. (3) Continue Reading →

The federal government sees the need to reform our nation's lighting strategy- they have banned the sale of all incandescent light bulbs by 2012. This push for greener lighting is not just to save the environment for tomorrow, but to save lives today! Each year, approximately 600 million fluorescent lamps are disposed of in U.S. landfills, amounting to 30,000 pounds of mercury waste. This amounts to almost half the amount of mercury coal power plants put into the atmosphere each year! It only takes 4mg of mercury to contaminate up to 7,000 gallons of freshwater, meaning that the 30,000 pounds of mercury thrown away in compact fluorescent light bulbs each year is enough to pollute nearly every lake, pond, river and stream in North America (not to mention the oceans). In America, 1 in 6 children born every year have been exposed to mercury levels so high that they are potentially at risk for learning disabilities, motor skill impairment and short-term memory loss. (4) LED lighting offers an environmentally conscious and financially responsible alternative to conventional street lighting.

Let Senergy USA show you how a revolution in LED technology can save your city money while saving the environment.

SOURCES:
(1) Clinton Global Initiative. http://www.clintonfoundation.org/what-we-do/clinton-climate-initiative/our-approach/cities/lighting
(2) Clinton Global Initiative. http://www.clintonfoundation.org/what-we-do/clinton-climate-initiative/i/cci-la-lighting
(3) United States Department of Energy
(4) LEDSource.com