Sustainability in the Lighting Industry

Everything, including lighting products, goes through a life cycle, and life cycle assessments (LCAs) are the “gold standard” tool for measuring and reporting the environmental impact of these products from production to disposal. LCAs help us understand a product’s effect on the air we breathe, the water we drink, and our exposure to harmful substances like carcinogens. They also identify “hot spots” in the life cycle that need addressing. LCAs can be used to create Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), which architects and engineers increasingly require for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or WELL Building Institute credits, to meet internal sustainability goals, or to comply with new regulations. With the pressing need for sustainability in lighting, what’s our next move?

LCI Template Benefits Ladder — High-level goals of the LCA and Sustainability Interface for Luminaire Equipment.

The U.S. decarbonization strategy focuses on the building industry, which makes up over 20 percent of domestic carbon emissions. Reducing impacts of buildings and their components necessitates determining the carbon emissions associated with all their elements, not only operational emissions. While there’s been work on the carbon impact of construction and building envelopes, less attention has been given to other components like lighting and power supplies. PNNL is supporting sustainability in the lighting industry by focusing on filling in data gaps for these building components, and on lighting systems integration with whole building life cycle assessment (WBLCA).

PNNL’s Role

In 2022, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) teamed up with LCA experts and multiple lighting manufacturers to develop strategies and tools that address existing barriers for accessing high-quality sustainability and life cycle assessment data. The aim is to support lighting manufacturers and specifiers in reducing embodied carbon, greenhouse gas emissions, and other negative impacts by removing obstacles for participation in data-driven sustainability. The project seeks to create a transparent, comparable template for standardized LCA data collection, allowing for assessments of environmental hot spots across a product's full life cycle.
PNNL has a set of unique product-, building-, or installation-level capabilities that enables us to address Department of Energy (DOE) Blueprint Key Barriers to Progress, particularly the lack of high-quality data and accounting methods. The workflows we have been developing can support the four DOE Blueprint strategic objectives (i.e., increase building energy efficiency, accelerate on-site emissions reductions, transform the grid edge, and minimize embodied life cycle emissions). Meeting the Blueprint’s 2050 vision requires rapidly expanding energy efficiency retrofits to significantly reduce building energy use intensity. PNNL’s work addresses this challenge by demonstrating the environmental, social, and economic value of deploying energy-efficient and decarbonized technologies.

The Light Ahead

As the lighting industry sets new goals to reduce climate impacts and promote social equity and justice, it's crucial to adopt holistic approaches and gather high-quality, consistent data for decision-making. When designing or specifying materials, products, or projects, we must prioritize circular approaches and keep sustainability—including environmental, social, economic, and equity impacts—at the forefront.