Lightimes Online News and Resources for the LED and Solid State Lighting Industry and its Supply Chain

June 7, 2006...As we enter another long hot summer, we're reminded how important it is consider the entire notion of energy efficiency. Most all end products produced by the compound semi (CS) and solid state lighting (SSL) industries are "energy efficient" in some manner. All CS devices are designed as smaller, faster, increased functionality, with highly improved power efficiency metrics than what they're replacing. It's always been that way. As just one sector example, isn't that what the "monolithic" in microwave components represents? Significantly increased functionality and efficiency neatly packed into considerably less real estate? And surely our power amps contribute to energy efficiency.

And now, with the advent of highly commercial solid state, advanced LED technology rapidly becoming suitable for the full gambit of lighting applications, lighting systems too are becoming smaller, with increased functionality... and way better efficiency than the alternatives (i.e. old fashioned lighting). Thanks to the advancements by all sorts of CS and SSL supply chain contributors, you can also add "affordability and reliability" to the list of descriptors as a given CS material system moves out of R&D and onto the manufacturing floor.

I found the news, (ref: our June 6 coverage) that the USA's Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued a preliminary online notice outlining how commercial building owners and lease holders can qualify for what they call the Energy Efficiency Deduction, to be most refreshing. It underscores just how much in the forefront our technologies are in contributing to true energy efficiency.

Energy efficiency is a great area for national governments to serve as catalysts for increased efficiency in a nation's energy output... at all levels of use. Mainland China is a known leader in this field, which is a primary reason we're supporting their upcoming CIF-SSL meet in July in Shenzhen. Gradually, we're hearing more from other countries also taking the initiative. In the case of the USA's IRS contribution to the energy efficiency cause, they call to the building owner's attention that this deduction can save them serious money. Saving money is the trick to getting any environmental incentive adopted more rapidly.

According to Permlight Products, Inc., of Tustin, California, which brought the new IRS initiative to our attention, the deduction comes as part of the USA's Energy Policy Act of 2005. It allows commercial building owners or lease holders to deduct up to $1.80 per square foot of floor area for buildings that achieve a 50% energy saving target. Buildings with below the 50% cost reduction threshold can still qualify for a deduction of up to $.60 per square foot of floor space if they meet a 16 2/3% energy savings target. Doing the math, those square feet can add up. Details are in the notice. The IRS indicated that the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) will create and maintain a public list of software that must be used to calculate energy savings for purposes of providing the certification. The DoE is obviously stepping up its involvement inn SSL. DoE recently announced the funding of five additional projects under its SSL product development program. The recipients are Color Kinetics, OSRAM, Kodak, GE and SRI.

Our thanks to Permlight for not only keeping us informed, but for doing a great job getting behind such government initiatives. Permlight and all the other companies such as Color Kinetics, LED Lighting Fixtures, OptoLum, etc.... are doing the tough job of actually getting the installed base up and running. They're like the frontline troops carving out a genuine and lucrative industry for solid state lighting. Other than our CS solar cell sector, I don't recall seeing nearly as much "energy savings" publicity as potential story hooks from compound semi companies as there could be. Unfortunately, it's been that way since the mid-1970s when I started covering advanced semiconductors. Back a decade or so ago, I was chartered by SEMI to author a newsletter titled Green Manufacturing. It was incredibly hard to find "news" not to mention garner decent readership. We dropped the noble experiment. That doesn't mean companies shouldn't give energy efficiency a try, starting with ISO certification. But what I'm underscoring is the publicizing of your environmental contributions. Playing the power savings card from the standpoint of CS industry news relations would, I think, make timely storylines these days for editors.

Think about what your company or the company you represent is doing to contribute to true energy efficiency. At one end of the supply chain, companies like ATMI, Matheson TriGas, Praxair, BOC Edwards, and others, contribute tremendously to environmentally sensible solutions for handling and treating the raw materials involved in making compound semiconductors. The end products all the way up the chain are similarly involved, and now with advanced LEDs as an end product qualifying as enhancements to overall energy efficiency, it looks to me like a story in the making. For example... an editor could have all sorts of fun using the news story title: The IRS Supports Solid State Lighting. (I considered using that as a title for this column, but I would have had to read the IRS notice carefully... and it's kind of long and boring).

Seriously... if all the companies in the businesses we champion in these pages installed energy efficient SSL lighting in their buildings.... and then tackled installing multijunction CS solar cells for some of the electricity needs... and made sure all their connectivity was CS-based, heck, we'd not only be practicing what we preach, we'd up the installed base of our true end products pretty darn fast. And if you don't have control over those type building decisions... consider at least using them in your own individual homes. That's what we're doing.

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