Osram Life-cycle Assessment has concluded that "LED lamps are already today more than five times more efficient than incandescent lamps and future technical achievements offer additional potential for the coming years."
Read the LED life-cycle research! The total LCA also shows that the LED lamp is one of the most environmentally friendly lighting products.
The life-cycle assessment looks at manufacturing, usage and end of life realities.
An OSRAM study monitored the life cycle of an LED and an LED lamp. It´s outcome made it clear - LED lamps need less than 2% of their energy consumption for their manufacture - over 98% are used for their task: illuminating the world.
Click here for more information about this study.
The aim of OSRAM Opto Semiconductors' LCA is therefore to analyse the environmental impact of an LED lamp over its entire life and to compare it with a compact fluorescent lamp and an incandescent lamp. The relevant material and energy supplies were determined in detail for all the LED lamp's components and production processes. Apart from a detailed analysis of each individual production stage, for LED chips and lamp housings, for example, these also include all necessary transports such as the transport of an LED lamp from its production site in China to its place of installation in Europe.
Apart from direct input of raw materials, the energy input, materials and emissions associated with the retrieval of resources are recorded. The results allow for conclusions not only on resource consumption and primary energy input but also acidification, eutrophication, the greenhouse effect, ozone depletion and toxicity.
The bottom line is that LED are efficient
In the first LCA, OSRAM Opto Semiconductors show that LED lamps are a genuine alternative to incandescent lamps, even when considering the cumulative energy input and environmental factors.
Often these fundamentally different lamps were compared based on their wattage. Conventional lamps with filaments are way behind diode lamps. A 40 Watt incandescent lamp, for example, can either be replaced by an 8W compact fluorescent light or, for some applications, by an 8W LED lamp, which means an energy saving of 80 percent.
In order to guarantee the comparability of results in the LCA, a lifetime of 25,000 hours was chosen as reference. The latest LED lamp generation (Parathom Classic A55 with Golden Dragon Plus LED) achieves precisely this rating. Therefore, 25 incandescent lamps (OSRAM Classic A 40W) with a lifetime of 1,000 hours and 2.5 fluorescent lamps (Dulux Superstar Classic A 8W) lasting 10,000 hours have to be used for a comparison.
Over 98 percent of the energy used to produce light
The study was done in collaboration with experts at Siemens
Corporate Technology, Centre for Eco Innovations and shows that similar
to compact fluorescent lamps with LED-based lamps over 98% of the
energy used is consumed to generate light. Less than two percent is
allocated to production. This has dismissed any concern that
manufacturing of LED particularly might be very energy-intensive. In
contrast to the primary energy consumption of incandescent lamps of
around 3,300kWh, LED lamps use less than 700kWh. The bottom line is
that LED lamps are therefore definitely more efficient than
conventional incandescent lamps. Apart from this, the ratings that
indicate the lamps' effects on the environment are consistently better
than those for incandescent lamps. As the efficiency of LED continues
to increase, LED lamps will be capable of achieving even better LCA
results in future. Three independent experts are currently verifying
the findings of the internal study.
A summary of the study is available at www.osram-os.com/life-cycle-assessment.
