New Technology for lighting: Critical resource issues
Résumé
Recently worldwide resource depletion, energy shortage, and climate change caused by energy consumption have become important global issues for national policy and sustainability. The lighting system makes up a big share in energy consumption. Currently worldwide, about 20% of global electricity consumption is used by lighting applications, which corresponds to 2,651 TWh/year (IEA, 2006). Residential lighting is around 15 to 20% of US household electricity use (Hansen, 2009). In France, more than 10% of total electricity is used for lighting (Businesscoot, 2013). 70% of this energy is consumed by inefficient lamps. It is clear that improvement of lighting system will bring a large amount of energy and cost saving. The light emitting diode (LED) lighting is expected to be the leader in the future domestic lighting system. Gana et al. (2013) conducted a technical and economic analysis of LED lighting by comparing it with conventional fluorescent lamps and estimated the feasibility of replacing the fluorescent lamps by LED. This study shows that LED has great potential to replace current lamps, mainly driven by the cost savings. On the other hand, however, the LED is consuming some critical (e.g., gallium), rare and precious raw materials. According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), the term “critical and rare materials” describes naturally-occurring earth elements that play a critical role in advanced technologies for batteries, lighting, motors, energy systems, electronics, and many other uses, especially emerging technologies involving magnets. The objective of this study is to quantify and estimate the critical and valuable materials in LED system for sustainable resource management.