Rise of Energy-Saving LEDs in Lighting Market Seen as Unstoppable

The switch to energy-efficient lighting will proceed rapidly this decade, no matter the results of a Republican campaign to keep older energy-guzzling light bulbs on the market, industry executives and experts say.

The reason is simple: The new technologies promise brighter days for the bottom line.

Light-emitting diodes or LEDS, in particular, are driving the lighting market as commercial, industrial and outdoor sectors — which make up 96 percent of the world's lighting energy use — continue to realize massive savings from the emerging technology.

"The adoption rate of LED is so profound ... and is happening at a clip that is surprising even for us in the marketplace," Tom Pincince, CEO of Digital Lumens, told SolveClimate News.

The Boston-based start-up builds "intelligent" systems with next-generation LED bulbs and software that can cut lighting energy by as much as 90 percent in grocery store-sized warehouses and manufacturing centers, saving thousands of dollars, according to the company.

Using the LED bulb's semiconductor chip, the systems automatically dim, brighten or color-correct lighting in response to various sensors, including motion, temperature and time of day.

Four-year-old Digital Lumens has raised $25 million in venture capital funding and has completed 100 full-scale installations since taking its technology to market two years ago.

In the next few years, Pincince said he expects LEDs to "go from being viewed as a premium product to the only way to go."

Already, the U.S. LED market is worth roughly $900 million, with the number of units sold expected to have a compound annual growth rate of nearly 80 percent over the next three years, according to Cleantech Group, a San Francisco-based research and consulting firm.

That growth is due chiefly to the widespread adoption of LEDs in television and display markets, which is driving down the manufacturing costs and per-unit prices for lighting by as much as 25 percent per year, the firm said.

Globally, the LED market reached nearly $5 billion in 2010 and is expected to surpass $7 billion at the end of this year, said Vrinda Bhandarkar, director of LED lighting research for Strategies Unlimited, an LED market research firm.

By 2020, the market is expected to reach more than $20 billion.

Quickly improving technologies and rising energy-efficiency goals by companies and governments, plus plummeting prices, are helping to drive the lighting sector's boom, she told SolveClimate News.

"Things are happening very fast."

She noted that the U.S. market may lose some, but not all, steam if House Republicans succeed in barring the U.S. Department of Energy from enforcing lighting efficiency standards.

Lawmakers are targeting a 2007 energy law that would phase out traditional 100-watt incandescent light bulbs in a bid to make America's light bulbs 25 percent more efficient.

The House on July 15 approved an amendment by voice vote that would prohibit the use of funds to implement the federal light bulb standards. The measure was added to an Energy and Water Development appropriations bill for 2012 spending after an earlier Better Use of Light Bulbs (BULB) Act failed on a 193 to 233 vote, with a two-thirds majority needed for passage.

"There is a sense of disbelief in the energy efficiency community that such a thing will ever happen," Bhandarkar said. The measure's adoption by Congress could dampen U.S. efforts to boost energy efficiency nationwide, she explained, but the momentum is such that it won't derail the push.

Bhandarkar says that electric utilities will increase the use of energy-efficient lighting in their facilities, traffic lights, street lamps and residences as national carbon regulations make it financially prohibitive to build new fossil-fired power plants.

"The whole idea is to get more from the same generating capacity without adding to the generating capacity, and the only way you can do that is to increase efficiency," she said.