(PDFs require Adobe Acrobat Reader)
- Mills, Evan. 2005. "The Specter of Fuel-Based Lighting." LBNL-57550. Science, 308(5726):1263-1264.
- Online version
- Without hyperlinks [PDF]
- With hyperlinks and annotations from Science [PDF]
- Supporting on-line material [PDF]
- All of the above [PDF]
Abstract
Contemporary questions about sustainable energy and development converge in unexpected ways around a technology that is at once an echo of the past and yet very much a part of the present: fuel-based lighting in the developing world. An emerging opportunity for reducing the global costs and greenhouse-gas emissions associated with this highly inefficient form of lighting energy use is to replace fuel-based lamps with white solid-state ("LED") lighting, which can be affordably solar-powered. Doing so would allow those without access to electricity in developing world to affordably leapfrog over the prevailing incandescent and fluorescent lighting technologies in use today through the electrified world.