IKEA,the largest home furnishing company and one of the largest lighting suppliers in the world,has pledged to convert its entire lighting range to LED by 2016,in a move that will have enormous implications for the LED market.
The company,which had revenues of over 24 billion in 2011,announced the move today.IKEA hopes to achieve increased sustainability for its own business while enabling their 655 million annual visitors worldwide to live in a more sustainable home environment.The company also claims that its lights will be the cheapest LEDs on the market.
The announcement has been based partly on the results of a recent survey.The survey showed that 65%of UK consumers believed energy bills have increased over the last year,while 69%did not know how much energy could be saved by an LED over an incandescent.Once the possible energy savings of LED were explained to participants in the survey,75%said they would be interested in using the technology.
Steve Howard,Chief Sustainability Officer at IKEA,explained,"LED is a light revolution.With household electricity bills continuing to rise rapidly and global energy consumption increasing,a small LED bulb can have a very big impact.It uses much less energy than a traditional bulb and brings a lot of home furnishing potential to the home.Building on our belief that everyone should be able to afford to live more sustainably at home,we will make sure our LED prices are the lowest available on the market."
The plans have already won acclaim from the WWF,who believe LED lighting could significantly contribute to sustainability and reducing CO2 emmissions.
IKEA have also pledged to change all the lights within their stores to LED,which contains over one million light sources,the equivalent of 23,360 UK households.
Bold statement and all very nice but what warranties will they be offering?The average lamp in the home is used 3 hours a day,1095 hours a year.So 5 years warranties are not worth the paper they are written on.I hope IKEA perform some due diligence on the quality as I remember clearly that when they were own branding CFLi's there were some shockers in there!
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