Lighting Up

by Art Woolf

On September 4, 1882, one hundred and twenty-eight years ago today, Thomas Edison flipped the switch at the Pearl Street generating station in lower Manhattan (near Wall Street) and the first commercial electric generating station began operation, truly chaning the world.

What impact did this have on the standard of living?  Brad DeLong and Larry Summers explain:

William Nordhaus (1997) has analyzed the real price of light: how much it costs in the way of resources and labor to produce a fixed amount of artificial illumination, and has found that the real price of light has fallen by a thousandfold over the past two centuries. A middle-class urban American household in 1800 would have spent perhaps 4 percent of its income on illumination: candles, lamps, oil, and matches. A middle-class urban American household today spends less than 1 percent of its income on illumination, and consumes more than a hundred times as much artificial illumination as did its predecessor of two centuries ago.

And The Economist  ($$$ firewall) points out that recent advances in electric diode technology may not reduce electricity use, even though the new light bulbs based on that technology are much more efficient than incandescent bulbs.  In fact, they could lead to an increase in electricity use:

SOLID-STATE lighting, the latest idea to brighten up the world while saving the planet, promises illumination for a fraction of the energy used by incandescent or fluorescent bulbs. A win all round, then: lower electricity bills and (since lighting consumes 6.5% of the world’s energy supply) less climate-changing carbon dioxide belching from power stations.

Well, no. Not if history is any guide. Solid-state lamps, which use souped-up versions of the light-emitting diodes that shine from the faces of digital clocks and flash irritatingly on the front panels of audio and video equipment, will indeed make lighting better. But precedent suggests that this will serve merely to increase the demand for light. The consequence may not be just more light for the same amount of energy, but an actual increase in energy consumption, rather than the decrease hoped for by those promoting new forms of lighting.

The article points out what happened when Edison's electric light bulbs replaced the previous  technology:

It is worth remembering that when gas lights replaced candles and oil lamps in the 19th century, some newspapers reported that they were “glaring” and “dazzling white”. In fact, a gas jet of the time gave off about as much light as a 25 watt incandescent bulb does today. To modern eyes, that is well on the dim side. So, for those who truly wish to reduce the amount of energy expended on lighting the answer may not be to ban old-fashioned incandescent bulbs, as is the current trend, but to make them compulsory.

 

Comments

[Shaan]

Here's a free link to the article http://magic.economist.com/node/16886228/

Long time reader, first time commenter. I like a lot of the points this site makes, but this posting almost sounds like you're advocating against a ban on incandescent lighting based on what *might* happen if people begin switching over to more energy-efficient forms of lighting, according to a study that "made some assumptions about global economic output, the price of energy, the efficiency of the new technology and its cost."

Without seeing this study, it's hard for any 3rd party to critique their results. That said, if it does lead to increased energy consumption, it will be by governments that can't control themselves, not by businesses and private citizens that make the upgrade specifically to cut long-term operating costs. While I agree a ban is counterproductive, this article doesn't present good evidence against one.

[Ed G. Mann]

OMG, think of the size of the upcoming carbon footprint this will create.

Vermont will have a black sneaker tread mark smudged across the entire map from Bennington to Newport with a slave labor logo centered over Montpelier.

All this caused by those whirligigs spinning in vain, trying to keep up with demand and failing, so the IP plant burns tires to supplement Middlebury's shortfall.