Lighting “consumes about 19% of the world’s electric power, more than all nuclear and hydroelectric plants can produce together (which is about 15% in total),” according to Grant Feller of the World Economic Forum. With significant future projected power demand and over a billion people without proper access to electricity (see Breaking Energy ‘energy poverty’ coverage here, here and here), major power generation investment will be required to liberate people from darkness and ultimately increase the untapped productivity of a swath of the population in respective developing countries.
Now, how much electric power is required to keep a single traditional light bulb lit for a year – 24 hours a day? The following interesting graphic shows the energy use of a 100 W light bulb per year differentiated by source:
Specifically, the graphic illustrates that 714 pounds of coal compared to 143 pounds of natural gas are needed to keep a single light bulb lit for a year. On the renewable side of the equation, over eight full days of sunlight hitting an area of 100 square meters covered with solar panels would be required to do the same job, while only two hours and 20 minutes of a 1.5 MW turbine spinning in the wind at 25 per cent capacity would be required. In this respect, Energy Star – a US EPA voluntary program – suggests that “if every American home replaced just one light bulb with a light bulb that’s earned the ENERGY STAR rating, we would save enough energy to light 3 million homes for a year, save about $680 million in annual energy costs, and prevent 9 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year, equivalent to those from about 800,000 cars.”
theenergycollective
