We’ve recently been on a bit of an LED kick, with our blog posts asking what the big deal is about LEDs and their advantages over other types of lighting. We have no vested interest in the technology; given our dedication to helping business owners and residential users find the best energy prices, economical energy use just makes dollars and cents sense to us.
So, given our very recent coverage on LEDs, we can’t help but be a little pleased by a bit of news that popped up in yesterday’s Guardian: starting in September, the Swedish furniture company Ikea will only be selling LED bulbs. The company had ceased to sell incandescent bulbs in 2011–well ahead of the bans put in place by most countries–but until the present had continued to sell halogen and CFL bulbs.
In their announcement of the shift to strictly LED bulbs, the company noted that since 2013, American customers have purchased more than 7 and a half million LED bulbs, in the process saving nearly US$3 billion in energy costs. Admittedly, it’s unclear as to how they came up with that particular financial figure–according to the math, each bulb would account for about US$390 in energy savings.
Regardless, Ikea’s decision strikes us as being a laudable one. There are very few companies that have the potential sales volumes necessary to motivate manufacturers to cut their costs as much as possible, while also having such a strong international presence that can potentially cause worldwide cultural shifts. Ikea is one of those few companies.
In the announcement, Ikea’s president explained that they were motivated to make the push behind LED technology not only in order to save energy, but also to cut greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. According to him, changing out one million old light bulbs for one million LED bulbs would decrease greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equivalent to taking nearly 7,000 cars off the road, or planting 17 million trees.
In the article published by the Guardian, the company’s chief sustainability officer offered a more down-to-earth rationale for the company’s shift: “If you can produce a product that can last 25-30 times longer and save you 85% of the energy and have fantastic light quality, then that’s the right thing for the customer.”
Whether you’re motivated by the simple desire to shave a few dollars off of your monthly bills, or by a more ethics-based wish to go green, the shift towards this new, efficient lighting technology makes a lot of sense. Hopefully more large-scale businesses will dedicate financial resources to energy conservation, in the process lowering the cost of various energy-efficient technologies as production (and sales) volumes increase.
