The willingness of governments, companies and citizens to achieve higher energetic efficiency has risen during the 19th Century. A century in which society has become more and more concerned about the negative effects of unlimited energy consumption. This is no longer sustainable in environmental and economic terms. Today we are going to talk you through energy efficiency in the world of lighting.
Lighting energy efficiency
According to the European Commission, the definition of energy efficiency is “the relation between the production of a service, good or energy and the spent of the energy.” Supporting efficiency is helping the sustainability of the planet, which every day gets closer to risky levels of emissions produced by the combustion of fossil fuels.
Energy audits run by companies in order to reduce energy consumption are becoming increasingly strict in order to comply with environmental goals. In 2011, the European Union approved the Energy Efficiency Plan with the objective of reaching a supply of sustainable energy and reduce the emission of greenhouse effect gasses produced by fossil fuels (petroleum, gas and coal) which are to blame for climate change.
Energy efficiency can be applied in different ways depending on different sectors. Something which is common to all sectors is lighting. Lighting energy consumption has great cost-saving potential, for example, within a council, over 50% of total energy consumption comes from public lighting.
According to the Technic Guide of Energy Efficiency in Illumination by the Diversification and Energy Saving Institute (IDAE) and by the Illumination Spanish Committee (CEI), public lighting in Spain uses a total of around 2900 GWh/year, which is 1.8% of the whole national energy consumption and is responsible of the emission to the atmosphere of 1.740.000 Tm. of CO2 per year.
This sector has a potential cost saving of 10%. Why? Because of low adoption of new technologies of energy efficiency in lighting to date, and also because the lighting levels of most installations exceed the recommended levels.
To assure energy efficiency in illumination, the night lighting levels must be regulated in order to control the illumination of the night sky. How? Applying some rules for illumination and choosing photometric lamps for the pavement and limiting the times of the use during the night and reducing allowed lighting levels during night hours.
