Interviews + Opinion

Part of the backlash against compact fluorescent lamps has been that they contain mercury. The argument doesn’t hold up on one level, which is that incandescent lamps require more power, which means power plants must burn more fossil fuels to satisfy that requirement, and thereby emit more mercury into the environment than CFLs. This type [...]

The New York Times’ green blog has published a great interview with Don Peifer, CTO for Lunera Lighting, in which he says LED companies should stop chasing incandescent sockets and create innovative fixtures enabling the technology to truly take hold. Check it out here. Hat tip to Randy Smith at the Lighting Design Lab.

Lara Cordell, LC, LEED-AP is director of technology for national lighting distributor Wiedenbach-Brown Co., Inc., for which I produce an annual lighting magazine for large corporate end-users called ENLIGHTEN. I had the pleasure of interviewing Lara, who is a lighting designer by training and one of the most knowledgeable people you’ll meet, for an article [...]

Sorry, this post has nothing to do with lighting, but is of vital importance to every citizen of the United States. According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, a large majority of Americans–Democrats, Republicans and Independents–strongly oppose the Supreme Court’s decision last month to allow corporations to spend as much as they want on [...]

I love getting inside the heads of some of the country’s top lighting designers; one can learn a great deal in a short amount of time and, just as important, see things from a different perspective. Contract Magazine offers just such an opportunity in this great interview of lighting designer Leni Schwendinger.

In his most recent “Energy Advisor” column, Bill Warren, my favorite columnist in the lighting industry, talked about how the Clash for Clunkers program, which targeted autos, is being geared up for home appliances. Bill asks the common sense and very good question, “Why not a Cash for Clunkers incentive program now for the obsolete [...]

Steve Frey, design director and an architect at Maclay Architects in Waitsfield, VT, contemplates the strong visual messaging and even deeper meaning in simple objects such as weather vanes. He says, “By learning to look at the everday object such as this and wonder why it is so powerful, we can use this lesson in [...]

Kevin Willmorth sums up the tradeoffs of globalization in his lighting and energy conservation blog. He makes the point that the U.S. economy is currently overly focused on taking profit from a devaluation process instead of one that builds value. The long term result is a loss of competitiveness and erosion of wages and qualify [...]