Behind the Themes and Between the Lines: Shedding Light on the Energy Squeeze
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EDITORIAL
Behind the Themes and Between the Lines: Shedding Light on the Energy Squeeze Buried deep on p. A18 of the New York Times, May 1, 2001, was a line that caught my attention: “New technology— like computer screens that use far less power and energy-efficient light bulbs— have an important role to play because they can save energy without reducing living standards.” The article, which began on the front page, presented the U.S. energy strategy in response to the energy shortages in California, as presented by Vice President Dick Cheney. What grabbed me was not the significance of this statement, which elicited more of a nod than a feeling of enlightenment, but that this sentence was so deeply buried and far removed from the central theme of the proposed plan. This sentence accounted for 2% of an article that focused on how energy needs require more coal, more oil, more natural gas, and revival of nuclear power. Increased consumer demands likely will drive expansion and improvements in all of these areas of energy generation and potentially others such as solar, fusion, and hydrogen power.1 However, this tokenism given to improved efficiency seems to do a disservice to the capabilities and real developments that science and technology present. One such development that switched on a light for me is the light-emitting diode (LED). Waving colored and white LEDs at the MRS Spring Meeting this year, Gerd O. Mueller2 of LumiLeds
References 1. See “Materials for the Power Industry” by B.L. Eyre and J.R. Matthews in this month’s feature on MATERIALS CHALLENGES FOR THE NEXT CENTURY, p. 547, www.mrs.org/publications/bulletin/ 21stcen/. 2. G.O. Mueller, “Recent Progress Towards Solid State Lighting,” presented at the 2001 Materials Research Society Spring Meeting in Symposium G on Luminescence and Luminescent Materials, San Francisco, April 19, 2001. 3. City Council Agenda Report, February 7, 2001, http://www.ci.santa-cruz.ca.us/ cc/archives/01/2-13meeting/2-13rpt/ energy.html (accessed June 2001) and personal communication.
Lighting described two recent advances that are enabling the proliferation of solid-state lighting in the form of lightemitting diodes: (1) the availability of LEDs of all colors and (2) the availability of suitable phosphors for generating white light. LEDs are more energyefficient than incandescent lights because they emit only the color of light desired and leave behind wavelengths that result only in unnecessary heat. One of the first broad commercial applications of LEDs for energy-efficient lighting is in the replacement of traffic signals—most economically for red, but now including yellow and green. Santa Cruz, Calif., for example, has replaced its red and green traffic signals with LEDs and estimates reduced power consumption by 80% as a result.3 In some cases a 1W colored LED can match the output of a 25-W (filtered) incandescent light.4 The value of this new technology depends on the function, one producer said, who supplies LEDs to Walmart, Disney World, and the U.S. Navy. With a ser
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