The World’s Appetite for Light: Empirical Data and Trends Spanning Three Centuries and Six Continents

摘要

We have collected and self-consistently analyzed data fornper-capita consumption of artificial light, per-capita gross domesticnproduct, and ownership cost of light. The data span a wide rangen(three centuries, six continents, five lighting technologies, and fivenorders of magnitude), and are consistent with a linear variation of percapitanconsumption of light with the ratio between per-capita grossndomestic product and ownership cost of light. No empirical evidence isnfound for a saturation in per-capita consumption of light, even inncontemporary developed nations. Finally, we extrapolate to the worldnin 2005, and find that 0.72 percent ($437B/year) of world grossndomestic product and 6.5 percent (29.5 Quads/year) of world primarynenergy was used to produce 130 Plmh/year of artificial light.