of Photonics Technologies: the European Perspective The Leverage Effect

The Leverage Effect of Photonics Technologies: the European Perspective
■ Significant reduction of costs is to be expected in most of the final
markets
Being a significant part of the costs, with rising energy costs and
reduction of energy consumption the accompanied costs for final
markets (business and consumer) will also be significant. These benefits
will be limited for the manufacturing industries. But also the
longer life will reduce labour cost for replacing the traditional light
sources in fixtures (sometimes equal to the reduction of cost due to
energy consumption), although an initial investment is needed.
■ Traditional lighting companies are increasing their competitiveness
The new functionalities will create new markets. They will add to
the competitiveness of the European SMEs when well supported by
research.
It is clear that the further market penetration of advanced lighting systems
will have positive effects on the environmental impact:
■ Strong overall reduction of energy consumption
The largest impact will be seen in climate change. The impact of the
substitution of traditional lighting systems by low energy consuming
advanced lighting will have a significant impact on the overall
energy consumption, as this is a substantial part of the electricity
consumption in our society. The total world electricity consumption
is around 20 trillion kWh (US EIA, 2010), of which about 20% is used
for lighting. Using SSL, an overall reduction of about 50% is possible,
because of overall efficiency and cutting lighting spill because of
enhanced manipulation.
■ Reduction of waste is overall uncertain
As the durability of SSL lighting is much higher, the production of
waste materials is to be expected to be reduced. Also the toxicity of
SSL lighting systems will be lower than fluorescent lighting systems.
Preliminary Life Cycle Analysis studies show that SSL is much more
environmentally friendly than incandescent lamps and more or less
the same impact as CFL light sources. Further future development
will even improve these figures.
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The social impact of advanced lighting will be limited although the improvement
in light quality over fluorescent light sources may have a
significant social impact and lead to positive perception of SSL. Security
and safety can also be improved, with more neutral and reliable