Dreaming of a Green Christmas

Holiday marketers are seeing lots of green in the green movement this year, and LED Christmas lights seem to be the environmentally friendly technology that's getting the most attention. Perhaps you've seen one of the oodles of articles on these products -- a great many of which seem to rely on those who sell these lights for details on their specific environmental and economic benefits.

So are light-emitting diodes as good as advertised?

Consumer Reports recently ran tests to determine how much it would cost to light 50-foot strings of LEDs for 300 hours. A summary of Consumer Reports' findings backs up many of the marketing claims on energy efficiency, as well as durability (LEDs last longer and are less prone to break) and safety (they are much cooler than incandescent bulbs and therefore are less of a fire hazard).

But the publication also notes that the price difference between LEDs and incandescents dims some marketers' claims about the bulbs "paying for themselves." And there are significant variations among the different sizes of LEDs that consumers also should know about.

The three sizes of LEDs that Consumer Reports tested -- mini, C7, and C9 -- used 1 to 3 kilowatt hours of energy, compared with 12 to 105 kWh for incandescents. The magazine estimated that would save somewhere between $1 to $11. That's quite a range. And LED strings still cost more. The C7 and C9 strings tested were shorter than incandescent strings with the same number of bulbs, so it took three strings instead of two to make a 50-foot wrap -- another added cost.

Another marketing claim -- that LEDs are now more competitive with incandescents on brightness -- didn't hold up entirely is Consumer Reports tests. The minis were in fact slightly brighter than incandescent bulbs of the same size, but the C9 and C7 incandescents were still five to six times brighter than the LEDs.

Given all of Consumer Reports' findings, it makes sense who the LEDs are mostly being marketed to: Green consumers who can justify a conservation measure that potentially promotes peace on earth and good will to men, even without an immediate return on investment economically speaking.

"By and large, our customers tend to be middle-class with some disposable income and environmentally minded," said Mike O'Connor, co-founder of Jackson, Mich.-based HolidayLEDS in an interview with the Detroit Free Press.

O'Connor also talked about the publicity his company reaped by challenging Michigan's budget-strapped state government to save money by using LEDs in it holiday displays. No reply yet from the state, but many other institutions that erect large public holiday displays have greened up this year by making the switch to LEDs. For the first time, the two most iconic U.S.holiday trees, the National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse just south of the White House, and one at New York's Rockefeller Center, are both wrapped in the new fangled bulbs.

Even some less notable large Christmas displays have made the switch. All 41,000 bulbs are LEDs this year at a Fort Lauderdale-area house that uses intricate if not extravagant holiday lights as an annual church fund-raiser -- with the whole display carefully synchronized to seasonal holiday music, such as "Carol of the Bells" and the FOX NFL theme music.....



LEDs also are basking in the warm glow of endorsements from groups such as Environmental Defense, the Alliance to Save Energy and the EnergyIdeas Clearinghouse. So even if these diodes don't live up to all of their buzz, they are a genuinely green technology.

For the record: We've decided to burn through our old incandescent strings before making the switch to LEDs, making sure we get the most out of them before sending them off to the landfill. But we have put our lights on a timer to automatically turn them off at sunrise -- another frequently recommended conservation measure.