Light In The Gloom
As well-informed people know, today’s version of low-energy lighting, using compact fluorescent lights (CFLs), is the wrong technology. The products are relatively cheap to buy, but they have a number of practical disadvantages, as well as significant ecological problems in their production and disposal. Although they are evidently the wrong solution, up to now the right way to go has been too expensive for domestic use. Brighter future The brighter future is the light-emitting diode or LED. Based on a far more efficient light source and producing a purer white light, the affordable LED lamp bulb is seemingly within our reach at last. According to Prof Colin Humphreys of Cambridge University’s Centre for Gallium Nitride, the new breed of LED lamp bulbs will last 60 years and could slash the proportion of electricity used for lighting from 20 to just five percent. In Britain, this could eliminate the need for eight power stations. Even better, the new bulbs do not contain mer...