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Ancient Greek scholars postulated that all things were made of four “roots” – water, earth, air and fire.  While other cultures around the globe made their own list of the “roots” of existence, fire was a universal item on all of these lists because it offered humankind both warmth and light.

In the absence of sunlight, fire provided – in one form or the other – virtually the only source of illumination for humans for thousands of years.  In historical terms, only relatively recently – in 1879 – did Thomas Edison invent the first practicable incandescent light bulb that would provide reliable artificial illumination for humans.

While modest improvements have been made since (such as the switch from carbon filaments to tungsten filaments in the early 1900’s), the classic incandescent bulb has been the technology of choice for more than 125 years for artificial illumination, particularly in the residential environment.  Fluorescent lighting made its commercial debut in 1938 and has been a dominant illumination source for non-residential applications ever since.

Today lighting accounts for roughly 20% - 25% of all demand for electrical energy worldwide.   A very high proportion of this electric power is completely wasted, since incandescent bulbs on average convert only about 4% of this energy to visible light, while 96% is lost as heat or invisible infrared light.  Fluorescent lamps improve this only slightly, to 13% to 20% successful conversion, topping out at perhaps 25% for the latest generation of compact fluorescent lamps (CFL), which, unfortunately, also contain unhealthful and hazardous heavy metals such as mercury.

The European Commission recently adopted mandatory targets for member states to achieve at least a 20% reduction in energy consumption by 2020, specifically targeting lighting for immediate attention, which in March 2009 resulted in a decision by the EC to ban the incandescent lamp in Europe by 2012.  Other governments have already directly or indirectly taken this step, including the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan. Joining with Norway, Sweden recently also announced that Mercury is totally banned from the market with effect from 1 June 2009. Other OECD countries are expected to follow within the coming years.

However, so far a rapid rise in market penetration of SSL has been hindered by very high prices due to high LED material and production costs. A major advantage of GLO’s nanowire LEDs will be industry-disruptive volume production costs at just a fraction of current planar UHB-LED’s, perhaps offering the key to mass market adoption of solid state lighting worldwide.

At the same time, and according to the United Nations, an astonishing 1.6 billion people – some 25% of humanity -- on planet Earth still live in the dark, without access to the electrical grid, and are banished to poverty because they have diminished means to economically compete with the rest of the world’s economies.

Recent studies indicate that despite the good intentions and early policy initiatives of governments, the rate of growth of electric energy consumption continues to rise, and this relentless overall trend is expected to continue as developing nations demand increases in electric energy supplies as their economies grow.

In short, it is no longer “business as usual” in the field of electric energy production and consumption, in particular as applied to lighting illumination.  And now the weight of public policymakers around the world is firmly backing the transition from conventional lighting sources to solid state lighting. LED based solid state lighting offers these advantages:

• Very high efficiency in terms of lm/W – as much as 8 times better than incandescent
• Very long useful life as much as >50,000 hours (or ~20 years in normal usage)
• Easily dimmable
• No cold start or running problems
• Compact form factor
• Low voltage operation
• No presence of hazardous heavy metals such as mercury
• Inherently rugged – no filament or thin glass package to break
• Directional lighting with tremendous design flexibility
• Potential synergy for off-grid use with photovoltaic cells