Leverage

Leverage

By Mariana G. Figueiro and Mark S. Rea

Archimedes is reputed to have said, "Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth."

It is no surprise to anyone in lighting that LEDs have moved our earth. It was an old saying that new light sources do not replace existing light sources; rather, they are merely added to the catalog. LEDs were not, however, anything like the previous innovations in discharge sources that they displaced — all of them and the incandescent lamps to boot are gone or will be soon.

Perhaps more profoundly, LEDs moved the earth of the lighting business entirely. The light source and luminaire oligarchies no longer exist. Prior to the widespread introduction of LEDs, the lighting industry was extremely profitable. Anyone can now be a lighting manufacturer, albeit a small one. And times are really tough now for the business of lighting research and education.

The Lighting Research Center (LRC) was founded in 1988 by the New York State Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to provide an independent voice in the quest for increasing lighting energy efficiency, well before LEDs were of any real commercial interest. We quickly saw the need to expand that mission to graduate education, producing many of today’s lighting application leaders. We also expanded that mission to develop some of the fundamental knowledge used today in lighting applications, including hundreds of peer-reviewed publications, tens of book chapters, and two editions of the IES Lighting Handbook. Among the LRC’s many innovations were the first independent testing program, the first lighting demonstration program, the definition of LED life and how to predict it, the theoretical foundations for mesopic vision and color rendering, as well as a definition of “white” illumination. Perhaps our biggest contribution to lighting knowledge was the development of a theoretical and practical understanding of how light affects circadian rhythms.

The LRC’s intellectual legacy was made possible by the support of the lighting industry through our Partners and Alliance programs. Plus, because lighting was a big energy user in buildings, we enjoyed significant and sustained support from many utility and government agencies.

All of that changed quickly with the widespread adoption of LEDs. The lighting oligarchs were gone because they no longer could rely on their capital investments for producing legacy technologies. Also gone was the support of utility companies and government agencies because they collectively believed that LEDs met their lighting energy efficiency goals.

Because LEDs are so good at what they do — serving as cheap, efficient, long-lasting, high-quality light sources — the lighting industry today has largely become a commodity business. This commoditization of lighting is a huge burden on those people wanting to create value-added products and services rather than value-engineered products and services. That burden is nearly impossible to lift without leverage. Consider the following illustration of the lighting industry and where we are now.

The commodity burden on the lighting industry (LI) is characterized as the weight (W). The knowledge about the impact of light on humanity is the fulcrum (gray triangle). The LRC helped build the knowledge-fulcrum in this image when the weight of commoditization was much less. To do so, the LRC (orange arrow) needed to be close to the lighting industry so that we could research and develop an understanding of the value that lighting provides. But by being close to the fulcrum, the length of y is small in this illustration. When the weight was small, we could apply enough force (F) to increase lighting’s value for the industry. Now a great deal more force needs to be applied to help the industry to return to a value-added business and away from a value-engineered business. However, without the previous levels of support from the lighting industry, utility companies, and government agencies, the LRC could only apply a limited force to lift that commoditization weight. We moved to Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and created the Light and Health Research Center (LHRC) in 2020. In doing so, we effectively increased our distance from the lighting industry, increasing the length of y in this diagram (blue arrow). Because we helped build the fulcrum and understand the value of lighting, we can, in principle, apply much less force to lift the commodity weight now facing the industry.

Lighting really is important to humanity, not simply because we can reduce energy use better than ever before, but because it can demonstrably improve sleep among the old and the young, improve safety for automobile drivers and pedestrians, and even improve the health of farmers and their neighbors by reducing the use of fungicides on crops. But the lighting technologies needed to improve humanity are essentially the same as those developed before the commoditization of LEDs. That is why we need to help lift that commodity burden from the manufacturers — humanity needs better lighting products!

So, it might seem counterintuitive, but by moving to Mount Sinai and creating the LHRC we are now able to make a bigger lift because we have increased our leverage. The following is a short list of funded projects we have undertaken since coming to Mount Sinai that, we hope, illustrates how people outside of lighting are beginning to see lighting. ■