Sped-up sequence of fast-moving traffic in a cityscape at night using long-exposure shots that create streaks of neon light.
TANYA HA:
Modern life as we know it relies on a plentiful supply of artificial light.
Shot of cars with headlights turned on, moving quickly along New York's Times Square at night. Brightly-lit billboards are visible in the background.
TANYA HA:
At the flick of a switch, we can do whatever we want after the sun has gone down.
Series of shots of spotlights and light bulbs, followed by a time-lapse shot of a cityscape with more lights coming on as the sky darkens.
TANYA HA:
But it's not a modern concept.
Shot of Tanya Ha next to a series of different light sources, including a lava lamp, a table lamp and the sun.
TANYA HA:
Do-it-yourself lighting goes back 1.42 million years to when humans first learnt to make fire.
Shot of a burning campfire and of a candle being lit by a match.
TANYA HA:
And then around 4,000 years ago, we turned fats into fuel in the form of candles, which were cheap and popular, but messy, inefficient, and dangerous.
Computer-generated images of burning candles appear around Tanya Ha. She turns to blow out one of the candles.
TANYA HA:
Fascinated with burning things — kerosene, this time — gas lamps were invented in 1792.
Shots of various kerosene lamps.
TANYA HA:
And, finally, almost a century later, Thomas Edison literally had his light bulb moment, successfully applying an electric current to a carbon filament — although science historians argue that he shares the glory with around 22 other scientists.
Image of Thomas Edison with a computer-generated thought bubble filled with a light bulb motif. Then an archive video is shown depicting a light bulb being removed from a cardboard box and placed on a socket alongside a shelf filled with other light bulbs, which are later turned on.
Dr Peter Osman, control systems engineer with CSIRO, speaks to Tanya Ha.
DR PETER OSMAN:
Filament lights work by pushing electrons through a tungsten filament.
Computer simulation of a light bulb with yellow lines representing electricity travelling through the filament structure.
DR PETER OSMAN:
The faster they move through the tungsten filament, the more they excite the tungsten atoms. The excited tungsten atoms make the wire glow white-hot. And that white-hot heat appears as light.
In the simulation, the electricity speeds up and emits a yellow glow that fills up the screen.
DR PETER OSMAN:
Only 10% of the energy we put into them comes out as light.
Shot of the Shanghai cityscape at night, showing street and traffic lights, a brightly-lit animated billboard on the side of a skyscraper and colourful animated neon lights running down the side of another building.
TANYA HA:
Man-made lighting now accounts for nearly 20% of the world's electricity use.
Shot of another view of Shanghai at night with a close-up of the Oriental Pearl Tower and the numerous light fixtures that cover its spherical roof structure.
TANYA HA:
And the effect is visible from space.
A satellite image of the world shows areas of heavy electric light pollution, glowing yellow against a darkened background. The camera cuts to an aerial shot of a large power plant.
TANYA HA:
It's the greenhouse gases associated with this power consumption that is prompting scientists to search for a greener light source and governments to ban the inefficient incandescents.
Camera pans along a line of different light bulbs, from traditional incandescent to compact fluorescent.
TANYA HA:
Since last November, you can no longer buy traditional bulbs like this one.
Tanya Ha holds up a traditional incandescent bulb.
TANYA HA:
From next October, we'll pull the plug on incandescents that are candle-shaped. And eventually, we'll start to phase out the less efficient halogen downlights, like the ones that you'll commonly see in people's ceilings.
Shot of fluorescent light bulbs being tested in a factory.
TANYA HA:
Compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs, are the current alternative to incandescent lamps.
Shot of two men walking into a hardware store with various light bulbs on the display rack.
TANYA HA:
They use a quarter of the energy and last around eight times longer.
Close-up shot of a compact fluorescent light bulb.
DR PETER OSMAN:
Compact fluorescent lights work by passing electrons through a gas of mercury.
Animated graphic of a fluorescent tube illustrating the principle behind compact fluorescent lights.
DR PETER OSMAN:
And it absorbs the energy from the electrons and produces UV light, which we can't see. And then it hits a phosphor coating on glass, and the phosphor coating glows with visible light that we can see.
Shot of a woman switching out the light bulb of a lamp.
BRYAN DOUGLAS:
Switching to compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs, will have an enormous benefit in terms of conserving energy.
Series of images of fluorescent light bulbs segues to a shot of Bryan Douglas, CEO of Lighting Council Australia.
BRYAN DOUGLAS:
We estimate we will save something like four million tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, equivalent to taking one million cars off the road.
Shots of cars on a road that cuts to a shot of Tanya Ha holding a light bulb, standing in front of a large skip bin in a factory.
TANYA HA:
The problem with fluorescent lamps is what to do with the mercury inside these efficient little lights once they reach the end of their life.
Image of mercury droplets.
TANYA HA:
Mercury is a toxic heavy metal which can vaporise at room temperature.
Image of mercury being swirled around in a beaker.
TANYA HA:
CFLs contain up to 5mg, about the same amount as the ink at the tip of a ballpoint pen.
Shots of fluorescent tubes being manufactured.
TANYA HA:
Large fluoro tubes in offices contain around three times more.
BRYAN DOUGLAS:
When the lamp is not broken, it is absolutely safe.
Shot of a fluorescent tube being smashed on the floor.
BRYAN DOUGLAS:
But when it's broken, some mercury is released.
Shot of crushed light bulb fragments.
TANYA HA:
This is why fluorescent tubes sent to landfill can present a risk to the environment, and why government and industry is gearing up to recycle them instead.
Series of shots depict the recycling process where a man deposits several fluoro tubes into a large machine. Crushed fragments are seen coming out from a machine and are passed through a filter that separates the glass shards and metal pieces.
TANYA HA:
Here at this plant in New South Wales, fluoro lights are crushed down and every part of the lamp is recycled. The phosphor powder, which contains the mercury, is siphoned off and sent away for distillation.
Shot of a forklift transporting a metal drum.
TANYA HA:
Then the mercury is extracted and used to manufacture new products.
Series of shots of different light bulbs.
BRYAN DOUGLAS:
CFLs, I believe, are a transitional technology. Lighting manufacturers are not putting any more research and development into fluorescent lamps.
Shot of many fluoro tubes standing vertically in metal drums, which cuts to shots of more advanced lighting technologies.
BRYAN DOUGLAS:
Solid-state lighting is just around the corner and, I believe, will largely replace compact fluorescent technology.
Shot of Professor Matthew Phillips, applied physicist at Sydney's University of Technology, next to decorative light fixtures.
PROFESSOR MATTHEW PHILLIPS:
These new light sources use nitride semiconductors to make light-emitting diodes.
Close-up shot of the light fixture shows small light bulbs studded along a metal frame.
PROFESSOR MATTHEW PHILLIPS:
These diodes convert electricity to light very efficiently.
Shots of wire-frame bulbs glowing in different colours.
PROFESSOR MATTHEW PHILLIPS:
But these devices are expensive to manufacture.
Computer-generated graphic illustrates the creation of LEDs — a blue square-shaped layer is topped with a translucent layer, which turns into a dark colour with thin gray stripes that transform into grids.
TANYA HA:
To make LEDs, you start with a sapphire substrate on which you grow the tiny light chips, which are formed using the naturally light-emitting material gallium nitride.
Shots of laboratory machines.
TANYA HA:
The chemical reaction relies on large quantities of ammonia, which need to be heated up to 1,100 degrees Celsius, making it a cost- and resource-intensive process.
Shot of a man in a white lab coat working on a computer system with several screens depicting statistics, diagrams and other data.
TANYA HA:
But it's here in Australia where scientists have had their 21st-century lightbulb moment, devising a method to remove the need for sapphire and ammonia altogether and reduce the high temperatures needed to make LEDs.
Shot of Giles Bourne, CEO of Bluglass.
GILES BOURNE:
Years and years of research in Macquarie University led to this breakthrough in remote plasma chemical vapour deposition — RPCVD process, for short.
View through a large glass window of a person in an adjoining room covered in full-body anti-static clothing and a mask, working with lab equipment.
GILES BOURNE:
It means you can introduce other types of materials, like glass and silicon, and that obviously has a cost benefit.
Shot of Giles Bourne and Tanya Ha standing next to a machine in the lab, followed by close-up shots of various parts of the machine.
GILES BOURNE:
You grow a very, very thin film of material, which is essentially an LED, and from that glass or silicon substrate, you can extract about 10,000 LED chips.
TANYA HA:
So does that mean that light source is smaller than a grain of sand?
BOURNE:
Yeah, it's tiny. Very minute amount of gallium and nitrogen were actually used for growing this. It really is light on resources.
Shot of Professor Matthew Phillips.
PROFESSOR MATTHEW PHILLIPS:
Compared with the incandescent bulb, they're around ten times more efficient. And they last 50 times longer.
Shot of Bryan Douglas holding a small LED bulb, standing next to a table with a large, lit LED bulb that has been cut to show the cross-section structure.
BRYAN DOUGLAS:
LEDs don't give off a heat that incandescent technology does.
Bryan Douglas uses his hand to feel the inner surface of the glass covering the large LED bulb.
BRYAN DOUGLAS:
If this were incandescent, I could not touch this, but as you can see, no problem at all — it runs very cool.
Close-up shot of someone's hand turning on a switch, lamps being switched on, and an exterior shot of a residential house with lights turned on at night.
TANYA HA:
But just how soon will we be fitting them into our homes?
Shot of Bryan Douglas.
BRYAN DOUGLAS:
Maybe that is now just a couple of years away.
Shots of various LED lights.
BRYAN DOUGLAS:
A technological issue with LEDs is that they are essentially what we call a point source of lighting. That is why they are very good in traffic lights and brake lights on vehicles.
Series of shots of traffic lights displaying green and red signals.
BRYAN DOUGLAS:
It is much more difficult to produce what we call area lighting.