For years, lighting companies have been predicting a time when LED bulbs will become the standard, replacing not only traditional incandescent lights, but halogen and compact fluorescents as well.
That time has come for one global retailer, Ikea. Beginning Sept. 1, the company said Monday, it will sell only LED bulbs, part of its overall sustainability efforts. The company had planned a major investment incompact fluorescent lights, but it redirected it to LEDs.
“Some of these technologies have to be driven faster,” Steve Howard, chief sustainability officer of the Ikea Group, said of the lighting decision. “People are concerned increasingly about climate change but also about household energy bills. So how can you try something that doesn’t take 15 years to develop in this space but takes three or four years?”
Ikea is also working to reduce its energy use and to include more renewables, with a goal of producing as much renewable energy as the total it consumes globally by 2020. By the end of this year, the company said it expects that its investments in renewable energy in the United States will produce four times more energy than the amount it uses in its American operations.
Read the full story. (New York Times)
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