Why Are LEDs So Energy Efficient?

The main reason that LEDs use so much less electricity than incandescent lighting is that they don’t produce light in the same way. Incandescent lights pass electricity through a filament that must get extremely hot for its atoms’ electrons to become excited enough to give off light. Most incandescent bulbs waste about 90% of the electricity they consume as heat because of this, making them incredibly inefficient light producers. LEDs, such as the popular LED recessed fixtures that easily replace incandescent fixtures, produce light using electroluminescence. This process doesn’t use a filament and creates little heat, instead relying on a property of semiconductors to generate light. It is thus far more efficient at converting electricity into light.

That efficiency is what enables LEDs to produce the same amount of light as the bulbs that LED recessed fixtures would be replacing, while consuming so little power. Of course, the fact that LEDs don’t waste energy by creating or relying on excess heat is also part of what makes them so safe, as well as why they don’t need the large, fragile glass bulbs full of toxic gasses that make handling other lighting sources more difficult.