A comparative life cycle assessment of luminaires for general lighting for the office – compact fluorescent (CFL) vs Light Emitting Diode (LED) – a case study

The paper presents a life cycle assessment of two lighting technologies based on compact fluorescent (CFL) and Light Emitting Diode (LED) luminaires for the general lighting of the office. The life cycle assessments are carried out considering all the parts of the luminaire: lamp, housing and ballast (or driver for LED). The environmental impact is evaluated considering the whole life cycle of the devices, from manufacturing (including the extraction of raw materials), to use and disposal. An experimental test was conducted to verify the illuminance produced by the two systems. Alternative end-of-life and electricity production scenarios were assessed and compared in order to evaluate possible variations deriving from these changes. The life cycle assessments show that the LED luminaire allows the environmental impacts to be significantly reduced (reduction of 41-50% of greenhouse gas emission and cumulative energy demand), mainly due to high energy efficiency in the use stage. The present paper makes three original contributions: 1) it presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a last generation kind of LED and luminaire built for this technology and compares it with a similar CFL luminaire; 2) it presents one of the first LCAs for lighting luminaires made with International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) 2011 Midpoint; 3) it shows a comparison evaluated with two functional units: 1 lm per 50,000 h and 1 lux per 50,000 h