»Sustainable lighting design meets the qualitative needs of the visual environment with the least impact on the physical environment.'

That is the working definition developed by the recently formed IALD Sustainability Committee, which first gathered at the IALD Annual Conference in Philadelphia in November 2001. 'The new Sustainability Committee of the IALD will provide a useful forum for those designers who have been implementing sustainable design concepts and processes to share among themselves and with other design professionals,' said committee chairperson Samantha Holloman of Hayden McKay Lighting Design. The initial meeting included JoAnne Lindsley of Lindsley Consultants; Jim Benya, Benya Lighting Design; Ron Kurtz, Randy Burkett Lighting Design; David Nelson, Clanton & Associates; Leslie North, OWP&P Engineers; Sara Schrager, Warfel-Schrager Architectural Lighting; and myself, The RETEC Group. That roster has already grown to more than a dozen IALD members actively working in areas of green design. A new listserv has been added to the IALD website (www.iald.org) to facilitate members' interaction on these issues.

The committee's first challenge was to define 'sustainable lighting design.' While adept at working with energy efficiency goals, most lighting designers are not yet associated with the growing green building trend. 'This committee's work, both within the IALD and through outreach programs with other associations,' said Holloman, 'will enable lighting designers to bring more options to the design table for recognizing and increasing lighting's potential contribution to the sustainability of buildings.'

A new level of awareness in the lighting industry was evident during 2001. I participated on a 'Sustainable Design' panel moderated by Leslie North at the IESNA Annual Conference in Ottawa in August. At the IALD conference in Philadelphia, Clanton and Naomi Miller conducted a well-attended sustainable lighting design seminar. In February 2002, Benya is delivering the keynote address provocatively entitled, 'Green Lighting or Green Baloney,' to the Energy-Efficient Lighting Systems conference in Tucson, AZ (sponsored by Architectural Lighting).

In some ways, this is old news. Lighting designers have long been advocating awareness for the importance of lighting quality-the primary goal of sustainable lighting design-and energy efficiency-a major element in the green building approach. However, relatively few lighting designers actively market themselves as green.

Noting the rapid public acceptance of green building principles, Jim Benya said, 'IALD designers are the most qualified to represent what is good lighting. We have a responsibility to actively set standards for how lighting quality is defined as part of green building. If we don't do it, someone will do it for us.'

The committee's broad working definition of sustainable lighting design is inspired by the oft-cited United Nations definition of sustainable development (by the 1987 Brundtland Commission) as 'seeking to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.' Sustainability is associated with the notion of the 'triple bottom line' for which success is measured in terms of economic, environmental and social impacts.

This sustainable approach to lighting design includes:

Collaborating with other design disciplines to further green building practices. Lighting designers are not automatically thought of as green design advocates. The committee quickly determined that we should not only communicate our mission to our own membership, but also connect with other leadership organizations to raise our sustainability profile and to encourage other lighting organizations to follow suit. This initial outreach effort will target the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the AIA Committee on the Environment and the International Dark Sky Association, as well as IESNA, LIRC and NCQLP.

The USGBC has become the leading organization for the sustainable design industry in the United States. Started in 1993, it has grown to more than 1,000 organizational members in design, consulting, government, corporate, not-for-profit and manufacturing sectors. It also administers the influential Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system. Several points in the LEED system pertain directly to lighting design, including goals for minimizing light pollution, maximizing daylighting and reducing energy use.

'It is important for lighting designers to have exposure to that kind of commitment,' said Nancy Clanton, 'especially to help architects and clients learn about lighting quality.' Her firm and committee member David Nelson serve on both the AIA COTE and the LEED technical advisory board.

Within the lighting industry, the IESNA and LIRC will be critical links for lighting designers to work with engineers and manufacturers to create new awareness and markets for green techniques and technologies. It is also expected that the committee's scope will extend beyond its current U.S. focus as its existence becomes better known.

Maximizing the use of daylighting. Daylight should be considered a primary light source in interior lighting systems. This is the first step in creating a lighting design that makes the most effective use of energy. It is also a highly regarded attribute of sustainable design, prized by building occupants.

Thinking of daylight as a fundamental and essential light source can radically reorganize lighting design considerations. It also causes the lighting designer to have a greater voice in the building orientation, window design, interior space configuration and interior finish selection.

'Looking at daylighting as part of the whole lighting design lets us better advise architects,' said Clanton. 'We can rethink electric lighting as a supplementary source in a three-dimensional sense, not just design by reflected ceiling plan.'

For the U.S. EPA Headquarters project, which incorporates four adjacent buildings in the Federal Triangle in Washington DC, Hayden McKay designed a lighting system to maximize and reinforce the daylighting. 'These are historic buildings originally designed in the 1920s for daylighting,' said McKay. 'We had to keep the original government-issue colors and deal with prescribed partition heights, but we have high ceilings and shallow floor plates that allow everyone access to daylight and views for these large open-plan spaces.' The linear direct/indirect luminaires are mounted to the soffit concealing mechanical equipment to supplement the daylighting. By placing the circulation space along the window wall, the daylight is better distributed and the luminaires could be moved further into the space. The window wall is illuminated with compensatory lighting to reduce contrast glare.

Minimizing the use of energy. Energy efficiency is common practice for lighting designers. The professional lighting community has been intimately involved with developing standards for 'energy-effective' practices that enable energy savings without restricting design quality.

This is inherently sustainable with the benefits of avoiding power plant emissions and reducing operating costs. Lighting unavoidably uses energy but new technologies and lighting design techniques have greatly diminished energy use in new and renovated buildings. Designers will increasingly confront new energy code requirements that must be balanced by the need for high-quality illumination.

Energy conservation and efficiency is the largest category of green design measures in the LEED rating system. This is the category in which lighting designers can have the greatest effect on the long-term sustainability of a building. As JoAnne Lindsley, the original chairperson of the lighting committee for IES/ASHRAE Standard 90.1, noted, 'Lighting energy issues are morphing into sustainability issues.' Starting in 1990, Lindsley, Helen Diemer and other IALD members began meeting with EPA and DOE to represent the lighting designers' perspective in the development of new energy standards and codes. 'Our work on energy addressed lighting quality issues, too,' Lindsley said. 'That led to forming the Metrics of Quality Committee, which led to forming the Quality of the Visual Environment Committee, which has led to some valuable research. Lighting designers are real players in those areas and the Sustainability Committee is a further enrichment to that effort.'

Avoiding skyward illumination. Light pollution or 'sky glow' has become a public awareness issue that lighting designers increasingly must address. While involvement with USGBC and LEED was flagged as important by the committee, the need to collaborate with other organizations that influence public perception and governmental policy regarding lighting was also obvious. This is especially true with the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), which has emerged as a powerful advocate for restricting light pollution.

'The IESNA is working with IDA to draft a model exterior lighting ordinance,' noted Benya, who serves on the IDA board along with Clanton and Miller. 'Light pollution is gaining public interest. Some local ordinances are well written while some others are unworkable.'

Restricting light pollution has some obvious implications for lighting designers. Entire design approaches to landscape and exterior lighting dependent on uplighting may have to be reconsidered. Even designs that fully restrict any upward illuminance may cause objectionable amounts of reflected light. But designers are optimistic about finding a balance between lighting and dark sky objectives. 'I believe we are successfully working toward a meeting of the minds between IDA and the professional lighting community,' said Benya.

Ensuring system durability and maintainability. Durability and maintainability are hallmarks of good lighting design that can go unrecognized as an intrinsically green practice. It stands to reason that a system that will perform the longest with the least effort to properly maintain is the best economic and environmental value.

'Standardizing lamps and minimizing the quantity of different lamp types within a facility help ensure that the design has a life beyond the initial installation that is consistent with the design intent,' said Leslie North. Citing a recent hospital project she designed with durability, access, uniform lamping and long-term maintenance especially in mind, she said, 'This goes a long way to establishing credibility with a client and their maintenance personnel.'

Encouraging environmentally responsible manufacturing processes. At the IESNA 'Sustainable Design' presentation in Ottawa last year, Ron Westwood from Lightolier, Paul Walitsky from Philips Lighting and Peter Bleasby from Osram Sylvania described their companies' activities in various aspects of sustainable manufacturing practice. Whether as part of its operating philosophy, research and development, public advocacy or manufacturing excellence programs, a company can demonstrate its commitment to environmental responsibility. Lighting designers can encourage this kind of commitment by not only admiring it, but by actively considering it in what they choose to specify.

In my own practice, I am increasingly seeking out companies that demonstrate at least some indication of environmental awareness. Although sometimes derided as 'greenwash,' things like environmental statements on manufacturers' websites or in catalogs can be genuine indicators of stewardship. Many companies have implemented environmental management systems, pollution prevention measures, packaging reduction techniques and recycling programs that exemplify this kind of commitment.

Advocating the development and use of renewable energy and other sustainable building materials and technologies. Lighting designers will increasingly find themselves in a position to advocate green building techniques. This may involve the application of renewable energy technologies, especially photovoltaic systems, as well as alternative materials and finishes. But this leads to complex questions of offsetting benefits and attributes of these materials. For example, the production of photovoltaic systems is necessarily energy-intensive and utilizes environmentally sensitive materials, but generates 'free' electricity from solar energy.

More pertinent to lighting designers are concerns about making choices between different luminaire and electrical component materials. 'I understand the need for lighting quality and energy efficiency, but how should I judge whether it would be better to use steel or aluminum housings or different kinds of plastics for instance?' asked Nick Ferzacca, head of the electrical department for Symmes Maini McKee Associates, an A/E firm in Cambridge, MA, who coincidentally called me during the process of assembling this article. We agreed that this is relatively uncharted territory for lighting designers and manufacturers that needs evaluation and research.

The lighting industry will inevitably be confronted with these kinds of environmental impact questions that have already been encountered by many other industries. Sustainable design and the LEED system place considerable value in the use of recycled and recyclable materials. This extends to reducing embodied energy-the manufacturing and transportation energy required to deliver products to the job site-and to minimizing packaging waste to product disposal, take-back and disassembly programs.

As with all the other aspects of sustainable lighting design listed by the IALD Sustainability Committee, this advocacy role represents a new level of responsibility and opportunity for lighting designers.


Mark Loeffler, LC, IALD is the lighting and sustainable design practice leader for The RETEC Group, an environmental consulting firm. He is also LEED accredited and is based in New Haven, CT.


January/February 2002 Architectural Lighting Magazine