EPA Green Lights pollution prevention through energy efficiency

This paper discusses Green Lights, a voluntary program established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in which corporations, states and other institutions - in partnership with EPA - commit to install energy-efficient lighting designs and technologies. The Green Lights program has the potential to reduce U.S. electricity demand by 10 percent and U.S. air pollution by 5 percent. Several barriers are slowing the penetration of new energy-efficient lighting technologies although they have the potential to reconcile important national goals such as pollution prevention, worker productivity, enhanced profitability and competitiveness and national energy security. Green Lights was created to accelerate the penetration of energy-efficient lighting designs and technologies, and bypass their slow, incremental adoption. In addition to stimulating energy-efficient lighting, Green Lights is a model for non-regulatory, market-based approaches dedicated to energy efficiency and pollution prevention - approaches that benefit both the environment and the economy. In the transformation to this new way of thinking, energy engineers can play a critical role in catalyzing and emerge into the new framework with enlarged responsibilities.