A New Way to Think About Office Lighting
Most offices have adequate but aging lighting systems that
often operate inefficiently, can waste vast amounts of energy, and annoy
employees. Wasted electricity, excessive or uneven illumination, and difficulty
concentrating are three top complaints of office workers. More significantly,
increasing awareness about the building sector’s growing role in climate change
is shifting tenant and investor preferences and influencing owners to improve
the performance of their buildings to stay competitive. U.S. buildings consume
nearly three-quarters of the country’s electricity and are responsible for 39%
of all greenhouse gas emissions.
The technology exists to revolutionize Commercial led lighting: LED bulbs
and today’s intelligent digital controls systems can together provide
higher-quality indoor environments while saving significant energy and money.
However, even though LEDs are fast becoming the go-to home lighting product
because of their long life, energy savings, and precipitous cost decline, Commercial led lighting in commercial buildings remain a
nascent industry, with $63 billion in market value untapped.
Basically, the problem is that everybody wants a better
lighting system but nobody wants to pay for it. Owners don’t want to spend
their capital budgets, especially where tenants pay the utility bills. Tenants
don’t feel empowered to invest in capital projects, especially when their
leases are short term. Hence the opportunity for third-party service providers.
We believe that a recent business-model innovation will
overcome this barrier and upend Commercial led lighting and other energy services. Third-party
ownership models, which separate the ownership of an asset from the service it
provides, have transformed other industries for the better. For example, your
company probably doesn’t own its copy machines. Instead, they are owned by a
company such as Xerox, which has a service contract with your company based on
your needs (e.g., number of copies each month). Lighting is a perfect candidate
for this sort of innovative service contract.

Comments
Post a Comment