Energy Efficient Lighting Plan for South Korea

South Korea has announced plans to invest $47 billion into energy efficient lighting technologies as a means of reducing national greenhouse gas emissions. The country – said Minister of Knowledge Economy Choi Kyung Hwan – will focus on LEDs (Light-Emitting Diodes), inverters and power transformers and – through doing this –aim to boost energy efficiency and slash CO2 emissions at the same time.

It is expected that – as a result of South Korea embracing new energy efficient lighting systems – 678 GW-h (Gigawatt-hours) of electricity will be saved, and over 284,000 tons of CO2 will be stopped from entering the atmosphere, as it otherwise would have done. Combined – these savings equal the power consumed by 200,000 South Korean homes.

At the end of 2009, the South Korean government reported a 2.9 per cent CO2 emissions increase for 2007 – 103 per cent over benchmark 1990 levels. This level of greenhouse gas emissions acceleration – said the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development – put South Korea head and shoulders above other industrialised nations. Around the same time, the country said it would implement a 30 per cent greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan, to be effective by 2020.

Energy Efficient Lighting: LEDs

The $47 million energy efficient lighting investment will be divided up to allow $9 million to be devoted exclusively to substituting LEDs for older halogen and incandescent lighting technologies. The Ministry of Knowledge Economy wants every single incandescent light, in particular, to go over the next four years, and LEDs introduced in their place. To encourage households to switch over, subsidies covering up to half the cost will be offered.

LED lights are approximately 80 per cent efficient. In other words, 80 per cent of the electricity applied to them emerges as light, and the remaining 20 per cent is wasted. This makes them around four times more efficient than incandescent lights.

In mid-2009, details emerged of an innovative new South Korean plan to lay down road strips to power electric cars. Towards the end of the year, meanwhile, South Korean scientists announced that they had created new environmentally friendly, bioengineered eco-plastics.