Photonics for a Better World

Not only does Philips Lighting North America ’s 10-watt LED bulb have the potential for saving billions of dollars in U.S. energy consumption and avoiding millions of metric tons of carbon emissions: it’s dimmable as well.   The bulb has earned the San Jose, California, company the Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) — the L Prize — for a 10-watt replacement for the 60-watt incandescent bulb. Replacing every 60-watt incandescent bulb in the U.S. with Philips’10-watt LED bulb would save 35 terawatt-hours of electricity or $3.9 billion in one year and avoid 20 million metric tons of carbon emissions, according to the DOE prize announcement (enough electricity to power the lights of nearly 18 million U.S. households , or nearly triple the annual electricity consumption in Washington, D.C.).  Steve Landau of Philips talks about the prize-winning bulb in this SPIE Newsroom video: LEDs for wireless, too Researchers at the Fraunhofe...

Do you have ready access to clean drinking water? That isn’t something everyone around the planet can take for granted. More than a billion people do not have access to clean water, and around 1.5 million children die each year as a result of water-borne diseases. Several projects we’ve heard about recently are employing photonics technologies to change this picture and save lives. A European Union research consortium is working on a compact, low-cost photocatalytic water treatment system that uses photons from sunlight to decompose organic pollutants in water. The completed system will resemble rooftop solar panels, and will be placed on dwellings near ponds and streams with poor water quality. It will require no electricity or chemicals, so will be well-suited to developing regions – and sustainable, wherever it is installed. Funded by an EU Seventh Framework Programme grant ,the consortium includes groups from Denmark, France, Italy, Israel, Jordan, South Africa, and the UK. A...