Energy Efficient Lighting Crucial To Facility Managers

Energy-efficient lighting dominates facilities managers' energy efficiency efforts

By Heather Clancy
ZDNet

Turns out there a really good reason that our posts about more efficient lighting technology tend to get more traffic than the norm here at GreenTech Pastures: Facilities managers polled as part of the latest Energy Efficiency Indicator point to lighting as not only their top energy-efficiency measure, but also the green technology that has the best price-performance ratio.

The indicator is an annual research project and survey conducted by building automation technology company Johnson Controls and the International Facility Management Association.The 2010 poll represents the opinions of 1,435 North American executives who had capital or operations budget responsibility for facilities AND who were involved in reviewing or monitoring energy usage for their organization. You can read more about the operational implications in my related blog on SmartPlanet.

Turns out that switching to energy-efficient lamps, ballasts or fixtures is the most popular energy efficiency measure embraced by those survey, cited by more than 72 percent as one of their strategies. Another 56 percent said they relied on adjustments to heating and air-conditioning systems, while 40 percent have installed daylight or occupancy sensors.

The fact that facilities managers are gravitating toward energy efficient lighting isn’t all that surprising when you consider that 51 percent say that it will offer the greatest performance-price ratio improvement of all the technologies they are using to address energy efficiency. The respondents were asked to pick their three most important technologies from this standpoint. The other top choices were smart building technology (44 percent) and solar photovoltaics (38 percent).

Information about the Author:

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green technology and corporate sustainability issues. Her articles have appeared in Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. In a past corporate life, Heather was editor of Computer Reseller News, where she was a featured speaker about everything from software as a service to IT security to mobile computing.

Heather started her journalism life as a business writer with United Press International in New York. She holds a B.A. in English literature from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and has a thing for Lewis Carroll.