#3 – Energy Usage: Lighting

For this third post I’ll be discussing how we can conserve energy by using efficient lighting and turning off the lights.

An Introduction and Background of Lighting

The lightbulb used throughout most of the 1900s was the incandescent light bulb, which had 90% of their energy released as heat and only 10% released as light. Then, compact fluorescent lamps came into popularity as the most energy-efficient choice of light by using 75% less energy and producing 75% less heat than the incandescent light

bulb.  Now, in recent years, LED lighting has developed rapidly, which use 90% less energy and last up to 25 times longer than incandescent light bulbs. LED light bulbs are the lead seller in bulbs currently and remain the best option for energy conservation practices.

What Saving Energy Through Less Lighting Entails

Often, we over-light our rooms, which wastes a lot of energy. To combat this, we can be more aware of how much light we actually need to light our homes or dorm rooms. Payless Power says that as a general rule, rooms need 20 lumens of light per square foot, though many offices and kitchens will have more.  These lumens can be determined based on the total light bulb wattage in the room. Since we’re in the dorm rooms and there really is only one light, this factor of lighting doesn’t apply to us as much. However, when we’re out in the real world, whether it be back home or in a place of our own, we can use the energy conservation methods of dimmers and timers for lights. These methods ensure that the lights are only on when we need them to be on, as well as making sure we are maximizing our lighting usage by dimming the lights if it is not necessary to use the light’s full capacity.

And lastly, one of the easiest ways to save energy is to turn off the lights when you leave a room, or to use natural daylight as your primary lighting when it is present. As we see in our dorm rooms and in many Penn State facilities, the light switches often say, “Turn Off the Lights!”, reminding us that we shouldn’t leave the lights on in our rooms when we go to class.

Negative Consequences of Inefficient and Excessive Light Usage

By using excessive energy for artificial lights, we burn numerous fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, further contributing heavily to global warming. As we know, fossil fuels are a limited resource, and we should do our best to preserve them. In addition, using excessive lighting contributes to light pollution, which leads to negative health effects for humans, such as insomnia and fatigue, not to mention its negative effects on the environment.

The Effectiveness of Efficient and Less Lighting

The United States Department of Energy estimates that households saved $675 million total in energy costs in 2015 from switching to more energy-efficient lighting, such as the now popular LED lights. If most Americans were to switch to energy-efficient lighting, the United States could save 550 terawatts of power every year (which equates to one hundred 1,000-megawatt power plants), which would cut national energy consumption by up to 8 percent. Needless to say, using efficient and less lighting would be a very powerful way to decrease our carbon footprint in society. While we cannot control the bulbs the university uses for our dorm rooms, we can control how often we have our light on and how long we leave it on.