NaBa Green Energy

Carbon footprint is the amount of Green house gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide emissions emitted by a building, organization etc. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases we are producing in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating, transportation etc.

For our discussion we are taking carbon footprint for indoor lighting in our office buildings. We can increase the performance of the building by using LED lights and reduce the building carbon foot print. In this article we will calculate the carbon footprint for

1. Incandescent Light
2. Compact Fluorescent Light
3. LED Lights

Electricity



We should know, half of our carbon footprint is due to electricity and 17 % is due to lighting alone. Electricity in turn can be produced by coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other. Electricity is produced from different sources and how much GHG released is shown as below Table

Source	Million metric tones of co2 emission for 1 year	Electricity generation (Billion kWh) for 1 year
coal	1788	1882
Petroleum	106	119
Natural gas	337	562
Other	14	22
Non fossil fuels	none	1106
Total	2245	3621

Since close to 2245 million metric tones of CO2 emitted by total electricity generation per 1 year. A single kilowatt-hour of electricity will generate 619 grams of CO2 emissions.



Incandescent Light
 
Incandescent lamp is a source of light which produce light when the filament is being heated. It can release 80% electrical energy converted into heat energy. We can calculate how much CO2 will be emitted by 40 watt incandescent bulb
 

• Power Consumption- 40 watts
• Operation per day- 10 hours
• Power Consumption per annum-146000 watt
• Electricity per hour (kwh) - 0.04 (1 kWh=619g CO2 can be released)
•  Lighting Carbon Emission per year/lamp (146*619g ) -90.3 kg.

A single 40 watts incandescent bulb will generate 90.3 kilograms of CO2 for every year. The reduction of carbon footprint is none for this lamp.

Compact Fluorescent Light
As we all know CFL produce less heat and more visible light compare than incandescent lamp. We can calculate how much CO2 will be emitted by 14 watt incandescent bulb

• Power Consumption- 14 watts
• Operation per day- 10 hours
• Power Consumption per annum-51100 watt
• Electricity per hour (kwh) – 0.014 (1 kWh=619 g CO2 can be released)
• Lighting Carbon Emission per year/lamp- (51.1*619g ) - 31.6 kg.

A single 14 watts CFL lamp will generate 31.6 kilograms of CO2 for every year. The reduction of carbon footprint is none for this lamp. CFL contains harmful mercury which creates mercury emission. Estimated suggestion led lights only will reduce our carbon foot print over than other lights.


LED Lights



LED lights consumes low power and energy efficient over than other lights. Not even a single point we can’t compare led lights with other lighting.We can calculate how much CO2 will be emitted by our 8 watt LED Tube light

• Power Consumption- 8 watts
• Operation per day- 10 hours
• Power Consumption per annum-29200 watt
• Electricity per hour (kwh) – 0.008 (1 kWh=619 g CO2 can be released)
• Lighting Carbon Emission per year/lamp(29.2 *619g) - 18 kg.

A building’s carbon footprint from led lighting can be reduced by 68%.

• Reduction in Carbon Footprint (tons)-0.122(12.28 kg)

	Incandescent Bulb	CFL	LED light
Power Consumption(watt)	40	14	8
Electricity(kwh)	0.04	0.014	8.008
Hours of Operation Per Day	10	10	10
Carbon Emissions (tons) per year/lamp	0.903	0.316	0.18
Reduction in Carbon Footprint (tons) / lamp			0.12

• LED light can reduce our carbon footprint by 0.12 tones per year.
• Led light does not contain mercury; it is a big benefit for this lamp.
• CFL contain 3-5mg per bulb which is poisonous. Mercury emission is 1.2mg from power plant using CFL.
• Incandescent, it is 5.8 mg from power plant.

Based on above comparisons, LED emerges as the BEST option to requce carbon footprint.