When you author a book like Green Lighting you get a certain perspective on life. That is what I need to share. You see America our lighting in this country is so outdated that it is costing us as taxpayers, corporations and individuals too much money. There should be no reason that a disgusting looking yellow outdoor light should be connected to the wall when it consumes over 200 watts of power, looks like well crap and costs so much money in this country. This affects governments Nationwide. Yes, we are talking State, County, Municipal and Federal; never to mention school districts and Higher Education Institutions quietly driving up the cost of those services. Yet nobody seems to talk about the Red Herring in the room. So let's go there for a minute.
On my blog, I wrote a while back that Reuters reported:
According to a study titled Energy-Efficient Lighting for Commercial Markets conducted by the analyst firm Pike Research, it is predicted that by 2020, Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) lighting will account for 46 percent of all lighting in the commercial, industrial, and outdoor stationary sectors. The LEDs will account for almost half of the $4.4 billion a year commercial lighting market within 10 years, reports Danny Bradbury, BusinessGreen.
BizGreen Also reported that with the U.S. mandate for green lighting in effect starting this month, more people get it and want to cut electricity costs.
Quitely, companies across this Country are and/or have installed LED bulbs in Macy's, TD Bank, Limited Stores and more are replacing incandescent bulbs and saving millions per State. Now there is talk of deployment of LED in all of the company stores nationwide. Plus, the bulbs will last 15-20 years so forget maintenance costs too.
I even saw Con Edison installed an LED Lamp that serviced a pole which was destroyed in the storm in October 2011 around Halloween. They replaced the lamp there to the pole by the transformer that went down and brought the power out to my area for 5 Days! It's on Pleasantville Road in Briarcliff Manor, New York.
I wrote in my book Green Lighting that:
A number of studies from the Rocky Mountain Institute and others have correlated increased worker productivity with better and more efficient lighting. Nationally, improvements to indoor environmental conditions are estimated to have generated $20 billion to $160 billion from greater workforce productivity, according to a report in the July-August 2002 Annual Review of Energy and the Environment.
In my home I replaced all the bulbs with LED bulbs. I can tell you that my energy bill has gone down by about $150.00 plus per month. $3,000 a year -- for life about $30,000 -- $35,000 in today's energy costs. That does not include future energy savings and spikes in energy prices.
So when you look at a lamp in your school district, college, corporate building or government building, please start thinking and/or asking someone, why not an LED lamp and keep jobs coming. The less an entity needs to spend on the energy bill, the more likely they will hire an employee. With greater workforce productivity of these lights, we will grow this country one bulb at a time.