Energy-efficient lighting could lead to more, not less, energy consumption

Economist : Will more-efficient lighting actually increase energy useâmdash;rather than save energy? That idea has been proposed by Jeff Tsao of Sandia National Laboratories and his colleagues in a study published in the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics. The team has found that improvements in the supply of light stimulate the desire for more lightâmdash;just as building more roads stimulates traffic growth. With better and cheaper lighting, the researchers note, interior lighting at home and work, which is currently only one-tenth the brightness of outdoors, could be made brighter, and the outdoors at night could be made as light as day.