(467d) Comparative Life Cycle Analysis of Different Light Bulbs Used for Street Lighting

Tremendous technological and sustainable development has forced the society to adopt modern and more energy efficient lighting devices instead of old fashioned less efficient incandescent lamps. Recently, incandescent lamps has been replaced with compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and Light Emitting Diode (LED) lamps. In comparison to incandescent lamps, these devices are so energy efficient that they provide similar light output at the expense of only 1/5^thpart of electricity consumption. This is due to the fact that less energy is lost in the form of heat during luminance phenomenon.

The ecological footprint evaluation for lighting system network in Veszprem county, Hungary has been carried out utilising Sustainable Process Index (SPI) methodology (Sandholzer et. al, 2005; Narodoslawsky and Krotscheck, 1995). It is an aggregate method resulting in an ecological footprint, calculating the area required to embed the whole life cycle in an ecosphere to sustainably provide products or service. The analysis is carried out considering three different light bulbs i.e. conventional or old fashioned less energy efficient incandescent lamps and high tech more energy efficient CFLs and LED lamps. The analysis results reveals that there is a potential to decrease environmental impact by 2 to 4 times by changing lamps from conventional incandescent to CFL and LEDs.