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Christopher Englert

Graduate Student - Earth Science, Ocean Mapping, University of New Hampshire

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How would designs in natural resource consumption change by adapting Rogier's LED strategy of lighting necessity while preserving darkness?

I'm thinking of changes in terms of the extraction of resources, best product design and consumption, and disposal. What would happen to the total land area of "wilderness" (national parks, preserves, sanctuaries)? Which products might be deemed unnecessary? How would we design cities around productive lands? Etc...

Hope this spurs a little action, as it's my first questions written to a TED Conversation!

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    Rogier van der Heide

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    Mar 23 2011: Hi Christopher, many thanks for starting this. I think consumption of energy was not the main topic of my talk but will change (reduce) when the ideas on darkness are implemented. Interestingly, energy efficiency improves with every generation of LED but this is finite: at some point energy efficiency has reached its maximum. The design of lighting with an apprecation for darkness is infinite: the stream of ideas never dries up, and by leaving part of our environment dark one can save a lot more energy than improving every light's efficiency incrementally. The darkness allows us also to work with lower illuminance levels, as our eye will see enough contrast to "read" the environment. So those are two ways to save energy by smarter lighting design...
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      Debra Smith 200+

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      Mar 24 2011: Hello Rogier, I enjoyed your talk and was inspired by the idea of an enveloping darkness. I think people understood your point. My comment below was about preserving darkness and energy savings was merely a byproduct and a rationalization that would encourage the transition to darkness.
      It is often said- follow the money (or money savings) to get your point across.
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    Susan Gregory

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    Mar 23 2011: I agree with Debra. if every office block and every home worldwide had movement sensitive lights, we would save an enormous amount of energy during non-working hours. Short and simple but very effective. Why isn't it already a pre-requisite - particularly for offices and new homes?
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    Debra Smith 200+

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    Mar 21 2011: I'd love to see many civic lights become sensitive to movement so that the lights were on only when people's eyes needed them. For example in a park at night the lights would automatically go on when people moved. On rural roads they might go on in series in response to the speed the car was travelling and the distance ahead for which visibiilty was needed turning back off when the vehicle had passed. This might permit all of these lights to have solar cells which might then be adequate for their useage time.
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