Abstract
In the last decades, lighting has evolved from a branch of engineering ensuring safety and performance in indoor and outdoor installations, to a key discipline interacting with a wide spectrum of fields and having a deep impact on our daily lives. Although this evolution also applies to other areas of knowledge, the special features of lighting make its potential and also its limitations different. It is not the typical field where a well-established mathematical framework allows a departure from well-defined input and identifying clear effects and conclusions. The reason is that lighting is a field dealing with the interaction between a physical phenomenon and a physiological and psychological system, the human being. In addition to the complexity of its basis, the relationship between lighting and sustainability has become stronger in recent years. This relationship is bi-directional in some cases: on one hand, advanced societies require more and more complex lighting installations, which means high energy consumption, use of raw materials, financial costs, manufacturing and maintenance processes, waste and emissions to the atmosphere. On the other hand, good lighting has an impact on issues like productivity, well-being, happiness, disease avoidance, safety, and many other qualitative aspects whose direct or indirect impact on sustainability is remarkable. This work will analyze how lighting can give answers to questions related to sustainability, not only from the classic topics of energy consumption and waste management, but from a wider and global perspective. The results of these works are analyzed, and the basis of the new framework of total lighting, discussed.
Highlights
The relationship between human activity and sustainability is direct and evident in some cases, and more complex in others
That is what we have classically called “sustainable lighting”. It is becoming more and more evident that some kinds of lighting can directly contribute to the increase of the agricultural production [14,15], the preservation of cultural heritage [16,17], or the attachment to traditional livelihoods [18], among others. These and other impacts of a smart lighting can help to decrease massive migrations from rural zones to big cities, contribute to a fair distribution of goods, preserve traditional ways of life, improve the health and well-being of people, and many other effects directly impacting on the environment and allowing development in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) [19]
Research using lighting as a tool to decrease the environmental impact whilst enabling sustainable development has been increasing in recent years
Summary
The relationship between human activity and sustainability is direct and evident in some cases, and more complex in others. It is becoming more and more evident that some kinds of lighting can directly contribute to the increase of the agricultural production [14,15], the preservation of cultural heritage [16,17], or the attachment to traditional livelihoods [18], among others These and other impacts of a smart lighting can help to decrease massive migrations from rural zones to big cities, contribute to a fair distribution of goods, preserve traditional ways of life, improve the health and well-being of people, and many other effects directly impacting on the environment and allowing development in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) [19]. The current situation and perspectives when joining together “sustainable lighting” and “lighting for sustainability” in the global concept of “total lighting”, a key factor to foster sustainable development [20,21] will be presented, and the implications for future research analyzed
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