The Next Giant Leap

Schubert is the Wellfleet Senior Constellation Professor of Future Chips at Rensselaer, and heads the universities National Science Foundation funded Smart Lighting Center. Kim is a assistant research professor of electrical, computer and systems engineering. In a paper titled, "Transcending the replacement paradigm of solid-state lighting," published in the Dec. 22, 2008 issue of Optics Express, Elumenus is now able to control every aspect of light generated by LEDs; allowing the light sources to be tweaked and optimized for nearly any situation. In general, LEDs will require 20 times less power than today's conventional light bulbs and, five times less power than "green" compact fluorescent bulbs.

If all of the worlds' light bulbs were replaced with LEDs for a period of 10 years; Tiger Green and Elumenus calculates the benefits to be as follows:

• Total energy consumption would be reduced by 1,929.84 joules
• Electrical energy consumption would be reduced by terawatt hours
• Financial savings of $1.83 trillion
• Carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by 10.68 gigatons
• Crude oil consumption would be reduced by 962 million barrels
• The number of required global power plants would be reduced by 280