The Scottish businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie’s motto “Let There Be Light” was inscribed over the entrance of the 2500 libraries which were built worldwide in the early 1900s with the money he donated. Carnegie believed in giving to the "industrious and ambitious; not those who need everything done for them, but those who deserve and will be benefited by help from others."
Outside every Carnegie Library is a lantern or lamppost which symbolizes this enlightenment. However, 100 years later, the lantern, Carnegie’s symbol of enlightenment, is still a tool of necessity for the 1.3 billion people, mostly in Africa and South Asia, who start life without having access to electricity and clean fuels for lighting.
The harsh fact is that more than one third of the world’s lighting is still oil based whether it is candles, oil lamps, propane lamps or the most widely used which is kerosene. In the evenings most of these impoverished households use oil lamps to carry out their daily activities but this is at a significant cost with an estimated $37 billion being spent annually on kerosene.
Not only is there a financial burden to carry but there are severe health issues associated with the use of kerosene. Smoke inhalation from conventional kerosene lamps and cooking fires caused respiratory disease, heart disease and burns resulting in 4.3 million premature deaths globally in 2012 (this was more than malaria, TB & HIV/AIDS combined). Likewise the luminous output from these lamps is so poor that constant use leads to serious eye defects and subsequently education is negatively impacted.
However as clean energy continues to become more affordable, thanks to the improving efficiency of LEDs along with the associated cost reductions, LED lamps are now cheaper than Kerosene lamps.
The adoption of LED technology brings several life enhancing improvements and not just the obvious health benefits. There is clear evidence that better lighting increases literacy rates due to the increased number of reading hours. We also see an increase in adult education as well as a greater economic opportunity for women, who are able now able to work from home during the evening. The decrease in fuel costs reduces the daily household expenditure and environmentally the impact is significant as a reduction in Kerosene consumption will see a direct reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
As the developing world’s adoption of LED technology continues at, to quote Carnegie, an ‘industrious and ambitious’ rate, ON Semiconductor will continue to invest in LED lighting solutions, applying our technologies and our expertise to the challenges of solid state lighting. The ‘benefits’ to those who need them most are positively illuminating!