The $230-billion Global Lighting Energy Bill

This paper presents the first global estimate of lighting energy use, costs, and associated greenhouse-gas emissions. Based on a compilation of estimates for 41 countries representing approximately 63% of the world’s population, we develop a model for predicting lighting electricity use for other countries where data are lacking. The corresponding lighting-related electricity production for the year 1997 is 2016 TWh (21103 Petajoules), equal to the output of about 1000 electric power plants, and valued at about $185 billion per year. Global lighting electricity use is distributed approximately 28% to the residential sector, 48% to the service sector, 16% to the industrial sector, and 8% to street and other lighting. The corresponding carbon dioxide emissions are 1775 million metric tonnes per year. Lighting electricity demand in the 23 International Energy Agency (IEA) countries represents approximately half of the world’s total lighting use. Our parallel examination of global fuel-based household lighting suggests that it represents an amount of primary energy of 3600 PJ ($48 billion), equal to 115% of that used to provide household electric lighting in all IEA countries, and 244 MT carbon dioxide emissions. Although one in three people obtain light with kerosene and other fuels, representing about 20% of global lighting costs, they receive 0.2% of the resulting lighting energy services. While collecting end-use energy data is arguably not a high national priority in most countries, this lack of attention is particularly problematic in this instance given that lighting is usually a preferred target for energy savings campaigns and policies. Without such data, precise scenarios of future lighting electricity demand cannot be developed. Improved work in this area seems merited given our estimated global savings potential of $75 to 115 billion/year. 1 GLOBAL ELECTRIC LIGHTING 1.1 APPROACH & METHODOLOGY In this paper, we develop the first global estimate of electricity demand, cost, and greenhouse-gas emissions for lighting. We approached this problem by creating a new database of national lighting energy use estimates. A special focus on the 23 International Energy Agency (IEA) countries enables us to put lighting energy use for industrialized countries in context with global demand. Our database currently contains electric lighting energy use estimates for 41 countries representing 3.7 billion people (63% of the world’s population and 81% of the PPP-corrected world GDP in 1997). We have focused separately on each major end-use sector (residential, service, industry, and street/other lighting) (Figure 1 and Table 1). In cases where multiple estimates existed for a given country, we tabulated them and selected the most reliable estimate for inclusion in the global energy calculations. Estimates can vary widely for a given country. This is strikingly evidenced by the 245 TWh and 340 TWh estimated by two studies for U.S. service sector lighting ∗ Expanded from version published in the Proceedings of the 5 International Conference on Energy-Efficient Lighting, May 2002, Nice, France. 1 Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, USA.