Investments in lighting will make a better world

Nairobi, Kenya: Lighting has extraordinary powers. It can change the way residents identify with their city and have a surprisingly positive affect on local businesses.

Take the Corpus Christi Bridge in Texas, for example. Built in the 1950s, time and weather had taken their toll and it had been unlit for a decade. But in 2010 City Mayor Joe Adame attended a conference where he heard about the benefits of LED lighting. Convinced, he pushed ahead with a public/private partnership to equip the bridge with 11,000 individually addressable colour-changing nodes.

Today it is a vibrant local attraction with light shows changed every month. One recent show synchronized the lighting with a live performance of the Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra, turning the bridge into an enormous graphic equalizer. Motels facing the bridge are regularly sold out and many of the restaurants overlooking it are booked out at least a month ahead.

"Our Harbour Bridge has been an icon in the community for many years and since the re-lighting with LED fixtures, it has become a new dimension of pride for our community," says Mayor Adame.

Cities have long used coloured lights to generate added vitality – think New York's Times Square, London's Piccadilly Circus or pretty much the whole of Hong Kong.

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But, as in Corpus Christi, today's new generation LED lighting brings a whole new dimension of richness, beauty and utility. Lighting up San Francisco’s 1.8 mile long Bay Bridge with continuously changing patterns is estimated to be worth as much as $100 million in additional revenue to local businesses through tourism.

Nor is the use of colour restricted to commercial use. Last October some 200 famous landmarks around the world were illuminated in pink. Part of a global initiative in support of Breast Cancer Awareness, this is a powerful demonstration of how light can be used to highlight a universal health issue in local communities.

Challenge of growth

Today some 16 metropolitan areas in the world have populations greater than 15 million citizens. The 10 largest range from 19 million in Mexico City to 21 million in Karachi, Manila and Delhi, to 26 million in Jakarta, while the largest by far, with a population of 37 million, is Tokyo. The list of large cities is set to grow further.

By 2025, over 8 billion people will live in our world. That's an increase of more than one billion in 15 years. Over the same period, the proportion of people living in cities and towns will have risen from 50 percent today to around 60 percent according to World Health Organization estimates.

This huge urban growth represents sizable challenges to city planners. Larger cities with more people in them need more light and implicitly have greater demand for energy.

As Harry Verhaar, Head of Global Public & Government Affairs at Philips Lighting explains, however, this in itself is an opportunity: “The good news is that the on-going increase in energy demand is being compensated for by gains in efficiency as a result of the adoption of energy efficient lighting. And these energy savings offer a triple win – for the economy, citizens and the environment.’’

Indeed, by 2020, Philips predicts, 30% less energy will be used for lighting compared to 2006 as a result of the adoption of energy efficient lighting. These savings represent a 515 million ton reduction in CO2 emissions.

Energy efficient public lighting is already delivering savings of around 50 percent in terms of energy – and in some cases savings of up to 80 percent. The savings achieved in this way ease the pressure on power generation capacity and free up financial resources for investment in other ways.

Dubai is a rapidly growing city that understands the benefits of converting to energy efficient lighting solutions to save energy as well as cost. As part of its mission to become the most sustainable city in the world, it has embarked on a three year project to convert the municipality’s 262 buildings from conventional lighting to energy efficient LED-based solutions.

With even more ambitious action on energy efficiency, the positive economic impact could be significant, as revealed by a report prepared for Philips by energy consultancy Ecofys. Looking specifically at the US, the report found that improved energy efficiency could reduce expenditures on coal, oil and natural gas by $150 billion by 2020 and $330 billion by 2030.  In addition it would reduce the capital investment requirement for US public energy infrastructure in the order of $500 - 900 billion in the same time period.

Rejuvenating public lighting with intelligent digital technology

In 2012 worldwide just 10 percent of new public streetlights installed were LED-based. According to published research undertaken by Philips, that figure is expected to rise to 80 percent by 2020 as inefficient technologies become phased out. 

Beyond economic and environmental benefits, the digital nature of LED is providing cities with greater insight and control over their urban environments. From Kuala Lumpur to Rotterdam, city managers see LED as the light source of the future, as smarter lighting plays an increasingly important role in making cities more sustainable, safer and socially cohesive places in which to live.

The city of Buenos Aires, for instance, is working with Philips to replace 91,000 street lights with intelligent LED street lighting. The system enables monitoring and dimming of each light point in the network on an individual basis, while allowing city managers to programme potential replacements or future maintenance tasks from a central hub. As such they have greater options for optimizing the overall network of lights as and when demand shifts.

Intelligent city lighting in Buenos Aires is delivering light on demand for greater efficiency and has an equally significant human impact, improving the sense of well-being and security of its citizens. The white light of advanced LEDs enables better facial recognition and improved colour perception, not only by the human eye, but also by security cameras, which is strengthening crime prevention in Buenos Aires. People feel reassured when their visual sense corresponds more closely to what they regard as "normality" – which is daylight.

Whatever their respective causes, the megatrends now emerging in respect of population growth, urbanization, sustainability and climate change can no longer be seen in isolation. Fortunately, many of the tools essential to the next chapter in the history of man as a social animal now exist.

In terms of both transport and light, the arrival of big data and affordable ICT networks make possible "highly intelligent" cities unimaginable only a few brief years ago. The LED revolution offers illumination infinitely more controllable and of vastly improved quality along with dramatic reductions in energy costs. That makes intelligent LED lighting a real game changer for cities quick to recognize its true potential – not only in terms of its impact on the environment but as a contributor to the economic growth of cities and the well-being of their citizens.