What Schools are Doing Conclusions and Challenges Notes Introduction Lighting, whether it be in homes, in offices, in factories, or in dormitories, is an environmental issue. Every flick of the light switch causes current to flow, turbines to turn, fossil fuels to be burned, carbon dioxide and various air pollutants to be emitted into the air. The most promising solution to that environmental problem is not, as many once thought, to sit in the dark, suffering without light. On the contrary, the best solutions often involve something far more palatable - choosing a better way to create light in the first place. The lighting found in most places is scarcely different from the crude device invented by Thomas Edison in 1879.
Electricity heats a wire in the absence of oxygen, causing it to glow white hot.
What many people don't realize, however, is that usable, visible light is nothing more than a byproduct, and a somewhat accidental one at that, of the heating process. Fortunately, there are better ways to produce light. Early fluorescent lights were not much better than incandescents. Even though they saved energy, they emitted a very cold, bluish light. They flickered, they hummed, they blinked repeatedly before turning on - in short, they weren't the kind of lighting most people wanted in their homes.