On May 5th -7th, over 500 lighting manufacturers and 20,000 lighting specifiers, architects, distributors, students, end users, and other professionals descended upon New York City's Jacob Javits Center to attend LightFair International, North America's largest annual trade show dedicated exclusively to the field of lighting.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, Lightfair International consisted of a three-day trade show as well as nearly a week of conferences and educational sessions covering lighting fundamentals, software, applications, controls, and solutions, as well as design innovation, product updates and case studies. Attendees saw the latest high-efficiency and low-mercury innovations in fluorescent and ceramic metal halide lighting for commercial buildings as well as exciting new LED solutions for retail and hospitality applications along with thousands of other new products designed to reduce energy consumption and costs, improve system quality, and promote environmental sustainability.
Evidenced by the high energy and aggressive new product activity at LightFair, the opportunity for commercial building owners/managers and property professionals to upgrade their lighting with high-performing and more energy-efficient technology has never been more robust! As confirmed by numerous Department of Energy studies over the years, energy-efficient lamps, ballasts, controls, sensors, fixtures, and a host of other lighting components and systems readily available in the marketplace today can routinely help businesses reduce their lighting costs by as much as 30-50% and achieve attractive paybacks within 2-3 years or less.
Energy-related legislation has also been very favorable towards lighting upgrade activity, now reinforced more than ever by the recently-enacted American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Obama regime's emphasis on escalating the nation's degree of energy efficiency, reducing our energy consumption and costs, and enhancing our level of energy independence and global competitiveness.
Prior to that, the Energy Independence & Security Act of 2007 set aggressive new energy efficiency standards for most of the 4+ billion screw-based lights being used in consumer and commercial applications in the U.S. Supporting similar legislation enacted in countries around the world, the act will effectively ban many of the most popular but highly-inefficient incandescent lamp wattages (with exemptions for certain specialty lamps) in the coming years and require their changeout to those light sources which meet the new efficiency standards - a pool of products currently comprised of compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs), high-efficiency halogen bulbs, and light emitting diodes (LEDs).
And the earlier 2005 Energy Policy Act put into place financial incentives in the form of tax deductions which provide up to $.60 per s/f on the installation of energy-efficient lighting products that result in a building's increase in energy efficiency by 25-40% or more over the ASHRAE 90.1-2001 standard.
Originally available for eligible technologies placed into service between January 1, 2006 and December 31, 2007, the tax incentives have since been extended through December 31, 2013 and are helping to channel our nation's commercial buildings towards a more energy-efficient and sustainable future.
There has never been a better time for building owners and facility professionals to undertake a lighting upgrade and capitalize on the attractive returns on investment and fast paybacks that these upgrades routinely generate.
Susan Bloom is director of corporate communications for Philips Lighting & Philips Lighting Electronics.
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