Comparative Life Cycle Analysis of Different Lighting Devices

Abstract

In the modern era, tremendous technological and sustainable development has forced the societies to adopt modern energy efficient lighting devices instead of old fashioned less efficient incandescent lamps. The examples of such new lamps compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and Light Emitting Diode (LED) lamps. These devices can provide similar light output at the expense of only 20 % electricity consumption in comparison to incandescent lamps due to less energy lost as heat during luminance phenomenon. CFLs convert about 45 % energy into visible light, while incandescent lamp converts only 10 % (Tosenstock, 2007). The ecological footprint evaluation for street lighting network in Veszprem County, Hungary has been carried out utilising Sustainable Process Index (SPI) methodology (Narodoslawsky and Krotscheck, 1995). The analysis was carried out considering three different light bulbs i.e. conventional or old fashioned less energy efficient incandescent lamps and high tech more energy efficient CFLs and LED lamps. The analysis results reveal that there is a potential to decrease environmental impacts by 2 to 4 times by changing lamps from conventional incandescent to CFL and LEDs. These results are in coherence with the ecological assessment study conducted by the Department of Energy (DOE, 2012) for replacement of incandescent lamps with more efficient CFLs and LED lamps.