As americans switch over from incandescents to CFLs and LED lights, the amount of power consumption devoted to lighting is expected to go down.  Likewise, since CFLs don't emit near the amount of heat that traditional incandescents do, it should also help cut down on cooling costs associated with air-conditioning in the summer (though there might be slight increase in heating costs durin' the winter).

I once calculated illegal grow lights exceed one gigawatt.  And what about all those street lights?

Our solar home is so efficient that when the Winter sun does not shine we just turn on a few lights.  Most of our waste heat comes from the refrigerator.

Clark,
I found some good figures at the Rocky Mountain Institute website. There are a couple of pdf files you can download there that detail an analysis of lighting power consumption looking at home, industrial, municipal and commercial lighting. The data is probably a few years old but will at least give you a snapshot of the status quo prior to the current CFL push.

Check out my ecothriller novel Primal Tears at amazon.com and other booksellers.

...the N.Y. Times just quotes the industry group, so we don't know where those sources came from...Worldwatch has no sources...the EIA study you quote seems to be the same that I used, however you state that they are talking about total power, but they are talking about total electricity (don't mean to nitpick)...which leaves the Energy Department BTU studies.  

Frankly, I'm not sure how to read those, they mention "on-site" and then "total primary", and a footnote refers to "generation and transmission losses", so maybe they are referring to the btu's lost at the coal plant?  In which case, if you look at "on-site", it's 6.5% of all power for lighting, which probaly is in the ballpark of the 8.8% of residential electrical use cited by the EIA for lighting.

it's a lot more than it need be. It's common now for new homes to have close to a kW of lighting just in the kitchen - and not just used at night.... Clearly neither necessary or sustainable.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Good posting - I'm against light pollution at night and wondered if more could be done about it - wouldn't it save a ton of money?

CFL - anybody else having problem with them spirochete bulbs?  They're supposed to last years and I get maybe 2-3 times as long as a regular light bulb.  The ones made in China were especially disappointing, and the ones from GE more expensive and tend to "brown out" and flicker just as well.  Longevity is not as advertised.

LED - might take a few years but for Christmas lights, I am totally down with them.  Only 10-20% of the juice required!  The colors never dim, wash, or fall off.  During this Holiday season, I'm especially impressed by them.  

Onward through the fog

Is assigned to heating/cooling costs.  That's a huge load of conservation that could be acomplished with geo heat exchange. Like Jon said.

LED lights everywhere, especially in those retail stores would help on the lighting conservation.  Solar skylights that bring light all the way down into buildings through conduits are good too.

If Walmart had them mass produced, like they did CFLs, then used them in their stores, it should bring the cost way down.

Generating green kwh gets a subsidy, conservation gets a subsidy of sorts, the money saved on kwh not used.

Are further subsidies needed for conservation?  Probably not, just use the money to convert government buildings to LEDs and geo heat exchange.  That impells large orders and mass production too.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Amazingdrx wrote: LED lights everywhere, especially in those retail stores would help on the lighting conservation.

LED lights draw twice the power of linear fluorescents. (50 lumens/watt vs. 100 lumens/watt, for the former vs. the latter, respectively.)

LEDs can be lower power targeted to just where the light is needed, then switched automatically to go on/off depending on human need to see.

That way the actual end use efficiency would far surpass flourescents running 24/7 at a convenience store for instance.  Shelf directed lighting would go on/off as you walked down the aisle.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Thanks for all the super-helpful comments, everyone!!

"But that's not the end of it: the Worldwatch Institute report says that lighting consumes 15 percent of household electricity, but up to 34 percent of the nation's electricity overall!"

Sorry to be commenting on this so late but I just read it.

A point:  note that the above quote would seem to indicate that non-household lighting uses 19 percent of the nation's electricity -- we need a serious movement to encourage businesses that cannot seem to turn off lights in offices after hours etc., to change their habits! Surely some people from the grist community work for some of these businesses and corporations -- how about it, guys?

are pretty cool too - and at 1/4w rating or less they are said to use less energy running continuously than with a sensor to turn them off in the daytime. The sensor apparently uses more juice than the light. I have one which casts a quite beautiful blue glow over our entire central hallway. For comparison, standard plugin incandescent nightlights are rated about 4W.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.