Public and private lighting account for a relevant share of the overall electric power consumption worldwide. The pressing need of reducing the carbon dioxide emissions as well as of lowering the lumen•hour price tag has fostered the search for alternative lighting technologies to substitute for the incandescent and gas-discharge based lamps. The most successful approach to date, solid-state lighting, is already finding its way into the public lighting market, very often helped by substantial public investments and support. LED-based sources have distinct advantages: under controlled coditions their efficacy equals or surpasses that of conventional solutions, their small source size allows for an efficient collimation of the lightbeam (delivering the photons where they are actually needed and reducing lightspill on the surrounding areas), and they can be switched and/or dimmed on demand at very high rates, thus allowing for a taylored schedule of lighting. However, energy savings and carbon dioxide reduction are not the only crucial issues faced by present day lighting. A growing body of research has shown the significance of the spectral composition of light when it comes to assess the detrimental effects of artificial light-at-night (ALAN). The potential ALAN blueshift associated to the deployment of LED-based lighting systems has raised sensible concerns about its scientific, cultural, ecological and public health consequences, which can be further amplified if an increased light consumption is produced due to the rebound effect. This contribution addresses some of the challenges that these issues pose to the Optics and Photonics community.

Date Published: 18 November 2013
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 8785, 8th Iberoamerican Optics Meeting and 11th Latin American Meeting on Optics, Lasers, and Applications, 87852G (18 November 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2025344

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8785:
8th Iberoamerican Optics Meeting and 11th Latin American Meeting on Optics, Lasers, and Applications
Manuel Filipe P. C. Martins Costa, Editor(s)