Life Cycle Assessment of Lighting Technologies

Lighting is a major global energy consumer, and as such, it causes notable environmental impacts. The environmental impacts of lighting products are researched by life cycle assessment, a method that takes the whole life cycle of the product into account. It is important to study the product life cycle as whole so that the major environmental hot spots are identified and the environmental impacts are not shifted from one stage to another when choosing a different type of technology on the basis of environmental impacts.

This chapter presents the basics of the life cycle assessment for evaluating the environmental impacts of light sources in particular. The typical results of the life cycle assessment of light sources in general are presented, but the chapter concentrates only on the lamps used in households. Household lighting is changing in several countries in the world from old, inefficient technologies (incandescent lamp) to more modern light sources of a higher luminous efficacy (CFLs, LED lamps). The change is often justified by environmental reasons. The environmental assessments of household lamps show clearly that the change from incandescent lamps to lamps of higher luminous efficacy is a beneficial decision from the environmental point of view.