A series of posts on 2nd Green Revolution have discussed Life Cycle Assessments (LCA). Companies ranging from New Belgium Brewery to Interface Inc. have generated these assessments for their products in order to determine the energy and material requirements to create, manufacture, and dispose of their goods. As the name implies, LCA considers all inputs from “cradle to grave.”
An article from The New York Times last week cited a study from Osram, a German semiconductor company, which found that “over the entire life of [a light]bulb — from manufacturing to disposal — the energy used for incandescent bulbs is almost five times that used for compact fluorescents and LED lamps.” Osram compared previous Life Cycle Assessments of compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) and found that the two lighting technologies yielded comparable results. “The result was clear: today’s LED lamps achieve the LCA values of compact fluorescent lights and are far superior to conventional incandescent lamps.”
Osram’s study found that “artificial lighting accounts for around 19% of global electricity consumption – that corresponds to 2.4% of worldwide primary energy consumption. 70% of the energy used for artificial lighting is consumed by lamps for which there are more energy-efficient alternatives. Simply replacing conventional light sources with LEDs would theoretically halve global electricity consumption for lighting.”
Generally accepted values for the efficiency of standard bulbs finds that 95% of the energy reaching incandescent bulbs dissipates to the ambient environment as heat. However, the whole picture is much more valuable when comparing incandescent to LED or CFLs. “In order to evaluate lamps and how they actually deal with energy and resources, it is not enough just to consider energy consumption while they are in use. The aim of OSRAM Opto Semiconductors’ LCA is therefore to analyse (sic) the environmental impact of an LED lamp over its entire life and to compare it with a compact fluorescent lamp and an incandescent lamp, all of them are commercially available.”
According to The New York Times, “To calculate what is known as a Life Cycle Assessment of LED lamps, Osram compared nearly every aspect of the manufacturing process, including the energy used in manufacturing the lamps in Asia and Europe, packaging them, and transporting them to Germany where they would be sold.” This approach comes closer to the true energy output of consumer goods. While the LCA of a CFL and LED bulb are comparable, the compact fluorescent bulbs include the toxic metal mercury, which could harm humans and ecosystems if released.
[image source: Osram]
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