Sustainability

More and more companies are opting for sustainable design and green lighting as the advantages also become more apparent. Sustainable design aims to reduce the excessive use of resources which means creating designs that are cost effective.

A lot of attention is being given to environmental issues today. As the need for sustainable design grows, more and more benefits are being offered to buildings and companies that make an effort to create a sustainable environment. Accreditations like the LEED or the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design now provide buildings with a structured framework of what is required to create a sustainable and environmentally-friendly building. The buildings and companies that qualify for LEED accreditation are then offered a growing number of state and local government incentives which can include tax breaks. For LEED accreditation, energy consumption is a major category to be considered.

LEED is an internationally recognized green building certification system,  providing third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across all the metrics that matter most: energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts.

Lighting is particularly emphasized when it comes to sustainable design since the energy consumption of lighting can reach up to 50% of the total energy consumption of a building. This does not include the cost of maintenance that lighting also requires. To effectively create a cost effective lighting design can easily translate to a significant amount of savings for a building. Thus, green lighting gains in popularity daily.

At the center of green lighting is the LED or the light emitting diode. The LED is the ideal lighting solution, featuring high lighting efficiency, low energy consumption, durability, adaptability, and longevity all in one lighting technology. With the LED, an impressive number of design options have become available to lighting engineers and developers.

The LED is the dream green solution. It contains no toxic material, which makes it recyclable and environmentally safe. It also has an almost non-existent carbon footprint. In fact, a city with 10,000 installed LED luminaries is able to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions by 11,000 metric tons per year.