I had a surprising meeting wait an operational manager of a company recently. we were discussing the advantages and disadvantages of energy management solutions.
There are so many great options available for organisations to use to be more efficient. I thought that I was meeting with a fellow advocate of environmental awareness, someone who would fly the flag for change..
From both parties the discussion touched on topics of lack of recycling awareness with in the many company structures, we talked about how easy it was to just turn down the air conditioning a couple of degrees and what a difference to the overall consumption of electricity, The conversation went on to further detail on energy management control and how by turning your home electrical appliance, PC, TV microwave, multi media etc a significant saving can be made.
Lighting was the next topic to be bantered across the room and I was on a roll now as this is a specialist area and I was thinking that with my new found eco buddy I could finally get the message across that it is not that difficult to ‘think green, think smart, think LED’
Here in GCC lighting for example is 22% of the total electricity used in the Middle East. This is a much higher rate than the rest of the world.
So we discussed the positive aspects of moving to LED,
A few facts:
v With a low energy consumption, LED lighting offers long life. Most LEDs are 
recyclable. Last for over 40.000 hours.
v Completely free of dangerous or environmentally-harmful chemicals.
v Becoming increasingly desirable due to rising energy cost. Service life is approx 40,000 hours .Change a 40 watt traditional with 8 watt LED and have the same light out put. This way you can make huge savings on your electricity consumption and as the wattage is reduced the amount of heat that is being emitted by the light source is reduced and the amount of energy the cooling system needs to cool the building is reduced as well so an added bonus.
v Switching from conventional lamps to energy-efficient = 80% saving!
v If GCC consumers switch their homes to LED => Savings of US$400 million and 5.1 megatons in carbon dioxide emissions annually!
My conversation guest readily agreed and backed up the benefits to our forward thinking approach so I was very taken aback when I asked him about his companies policy on sustainable lighting and LED vs traditional?
His response was – that at this time it was not cost effective and he would continue to go for the cheaper traditional bulbs at a few dirham’s each instead of the more expensive energy saving ones.
I argues that though LED were more costly on the outset it was proven to be more cost effective in the long run and definitely saved on energy consumption and added to that was proven to be a huge saving on operational costs and maintaince was greatly reduced and LED bulbs lasted approximately 5 years.
Arguing the environmental responsibility was at this point lost.
What did become so clear was that it is the same old story that is it always someone else problem, someone else issue, someone else’s financial input that will be needed to make the switch from costly energy sapping buildings to more environmental friendly, energy efficient ones.
My conclusion is that maybe nothing will really be done on any scale to make a difference unless the Government makes it mandatory and sets in place penalties for those companies who blatantly ignore the levels of energy consumed and continue to be blinkered to that fact that problems with the carbon omissions and energy usage is a world wide issue and we cannot be so arrogant to make the assumption that it is always someone else’s problem to solve. We all have to do our bit to secure the future for generations to come.