Lighting the Way to Improved Energy Efficiency
Lighting currently represents about 17.5% of all global electricity consumption. The U.S. alone accounts for approximately 20% of this amount at an annual cost of over $40 billion.1 As energy efficiency becomes increasingly important for controlling costs, improving energy independence, and reducing environmental impacts, governments are instituting programs to encourage better lighting choices among homeowners and builders. The current trend shift for consumer households in particular is from heat-generating incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescents or CFLs. Some governments are even mandating the shift to more efficient lighting. Styron offers the products to help enable these more energy efficient bulbs to perform safely and effectively, while giving manufactures design freedom.
To put the environmental and cost savings in real terms…
- A CFL bulb uses 75% less energy than an incandescent bulb, lasts about 10 times longer, and can save a consumer about $40 over its lifetime.2
- If every home in the US replaced just one light with an ENERGY STAR CFL bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for one year.2
- That’s about $600 million in annual energy costs and nine billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year, equivalent to the emissions of about 800,000 cars.2
CALIBRE™ polycarbonate resins are used in the production of luminaires, which are the fixtures that direct and control the distribution of light. CALIBRE™ resins are chosen not only for their high clarity, heat resistance, and protective properties, but also because of their high flow attributes during processing, helping enable manufactures to design aesthetically pleasing light fixtures.
But CFLs are just the first generation of energy efficient bulbs. LED (solid-state) lighting is quickly emerging as the next new technology in efficient lighting. It is estimated that residential LED lighting uses at least 75% less energy and lasts 15 times longer than incandescent lighting.2 CALIBRE™ polycarbonate resins offer high transparency for LED display lighting or can be suitably modified for exceptional opalescence when required for light diffusion – again, making Styron products integral to the performance of more sustainable choices in lighting.
Learn how plastics from Styron can “light up” your next application.
1Data provided by Pike Research
http://www.the-infoshop.com/report/pike119247-energy-e-lighting.html
2Data provided by ENERGY STAR and assumes use of ENERGY STAR approved bulbs
