@supernovae @pieist @raulclima
yeah seems like a bizarre way to phrase it, think pretty much everyone understands energy savings from LEDs are relative to other lighting technology, not compared to having no lights at all.
Are there people out there who believe LEDs feed the grid? 🥴
@reedmideke @supernovae @pieist Yes, but the phrasing was deliberate. Not bizarre considering that more light is being used than before, that light is now being used in places that weren’t lit before (e.g. the new fashion of illuminating “every” façade, LED panels), and used during longer periods, thus compensating (or surpassing, in many situations) previous consumptions. And adding light pollution to places & in periods where/when it was absent.
@raulclima @reedmideke @supernovae@universeodon.com Thanks for the clarification. There is of course the minor case where LED's visible-light efficiency makes pure solar-powered lighting installations practical where they were not before. But yes, there do seem to be many new cases of gratuitous or wasteful lighting, which is still a net waste: to say nothing of the additional embodied-energy total-life-cycle costs.
@raulclima @reedmideke @supernovae@universeodon.com
Yes. And all that you say speaks to the larger issue of "energy conservation" device choices being a poor substitute for eliminating the device entirely. For example, buying an electric car might be better than buying an ICE car, but an indescribably worse choice than simply reducing the number of cars you have by one, and using transit, bicycles and -- in a pinch -- carshares.
I considered buying an electric car. But given that it takes 30-50K kilometers of driving to offset the embodied energy cost before any net savings are realized, I've decided to see if I can avoid buying _any_ car ever again.
@pieist @reedmideke @supernovae Exactly. The problems go beyond the efficiency or energy issues. It’s about the quantity and the use we give to it, knowing that every energy production (starting from oil, of course, but also the extraction of lithium or wind turbines have several impacts of their own) and energy use cause impacts. It’s about how to spend it fairly. We cannot persist in old habits&errors. How to do it full scale? Nobody knows, I guess.
@pieist @reedmideke @supernovae Yes to all. My point was to bring to the discussion the way that light is being promoted by the industry (via “savings”).
However, regardless of the consumption (even near zero, with solar-powered, as you mention), the main concerns are the impacts of light in biodiversity and the night sky. Even solar-powered, the industry will keep selling and promoting it. Therefore, it’s imperative to regulate the emissions of light.