Lemnis Lighting was established in 2005 to solve one of our planets largest energy challenges of today: changing from lighting – which consumes about 20 percent of global electricity – to energy efficient lighting. The fact that Lemnis has LED technology is only relevant if it generates high volume demand where the environmental impact is clear and measurable: we believe that this is exactly what technology is for: to improve life on earth for all.

History
Lemnis Lighting is the third of a series of clean technology companies incorporated under the “umbrella” of Tendris. The philosophy of Tendris is that sustainable companies should provide superior products and services in terms of use, energy consumption and price. Over the last 150 years the focus has been to make our production and consumption industry more and more efficient: consumers were central and natural resources seemed endless. The reality is different: the real transformation towards an efficient economy has not been made: we like to say that if you make a bad system more efficient, you are still left with a bad system, you’re just doing bad things more efficiently.

The real transformation has to take into account that we only have one planet and instead of 6 billion we will soon have 10 billion people. And those 10 billion people will want to have comparable lifestyles as we have in Europe and the USA. If we continue on the current path, the planet will not allow for it.

Back to lighting. Traditional incandescent bulbs produce light by using up to two percent of the energy for light and the rest is heat, aka waste. We believed it had to be possible to improve this by transforming the lighting industry from wasteful, traditional technology to a new technology: light emitting diodes (LED).

LEDs have been used since the many decades already as signaling light and more and more for colorful beautification light. Now it was time to start using it where it counts most: functional lighting. Then again, if you want to make a quantum shift to mass adoption by consumers, it should be more than just functional: it should be beautiful. And you should be saving energy and money. And the environment. Enter Lemnis.

Lemnis 2005 – 2009
When Lemnis started to look at opportunities to shift the lighting industry, a slow movement was taking place from incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescent light (CFL) lights. Although both types of lighting have been on the market together for more almost 30 years, CFL’s are still not perceived to be as good as incandescent lights: no wonder CFLs have less than 20 percent market penetration in western economies despite their energy efficiency and affordable pricing: people don’t really like them. Equally important, CFLs, have the big disadvantage that they contain mercury. More and more people realise that this will cause a huge problem for future generations. If we calculate that every year around 15 billion lights (bulbs but also fixtures) are sold, going towards a market of 5 billion CFL’s per year (with a lifetime of around 5000 hours) means we have a huge waste issue. Especially in countries like China, India, Africa and South-America: because this is a finance magazine, you should know that carbon finance plays a significant role in this: in the next few years, under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism, 100s of millions of CFLs will be given away for free in emerging economies, while no effective CFL recycling programs are in place: if we are not too happy with exposing our own children to mercury, should we be dumping these products near other people’s children?

Lemnis’ efforts were therefore aimed at developing a LED light bulb that could replace the old incandescent light bulb, but also immediately would make the CFL bulb irrelevant. As people do not like CFL’s in general, if a new and better solution would be available people will switch to this type of lighting: LEDs offer this and the Pharox was the first realistic alternative, offering warm, white light in product that was designed for people so that they actually want it! In November 2006 we introduced the first LED bulb in the Netherlands that can realistically be seen as the first replacement of a 40W incandescent bulb. Our Pharox 200 LED bulb only uses 5W, so an energy saving of 85 percent.

In 2009, we also developed a Pharox 300 LED bulb (using 6W) that can replace up to a 60W incandescent bulb.

Today, we have expanded into a full suite of products, including spotlights, candelabra lights and specific down-light applications, so that we now can fulfill a much as 90 percent of the average homes lighting needs. Zero compromise lighting solutions that will help people switch, and why not? Every day you delay switching you are basically wasting money.

Lemnis has developed four business lines that all provide attractive alternatives to the incumbent technologies:

» Indoor housing and office lighting
» Outdoor lighting (including streetlight)
» Greenhouse lighting
» Solar powered LED lighting for off-the-grid lighting solutions

Lemnis has put sustainability at the centre of the design process. Using this approach, the company develops lighting innovations that help consumers, companies and policy makers to combat climate change by replacing traditional lighting with LED technology. The advantages of led lighting are bigger than energy savings alone: costs for maintenance and replacement are both reduced, while performance is enhanced: why replace a light bulb every year if you could do only once in 25 years? Why use natural resources 25 times if you could do with once? And that’s what Lemnis Lighting is all about: sustainability without compromise, and no concessions for the end user.

Lemnis believe in partnerships and long term cooperation. This means that we have engaged with world leading specialists and companies technology development, manufacturers of all components for the best LED lighting solutions and for distribution as well. Also, we are aiming to produce locally instead of producing in one region and ship all the lights around the world. We strongly believe in the so-called “local for local” business model.

This means that we always team up with a local company wherever we see a strong demand for energy efficient lighting. In India we have engaged with one of the leading lighting companies Crompton Greaves based on a 50-50 partnership and in China we have set up a JV company with a well-established China corporation. These partnerships are core to our open innovation philosophy and our vision that a better world is created through cooperation and even competition: we believe in competing with, rather than competing against. This is why we welcome the competition entering the playing field, because it helps transition lighting to sustainable lighting and it supports the general awareness we seek to create.

Awareness
Changing traditional lights is a daily activity basically because people are used that lights break and have to be replaced. In order to create more awareness that our human behavior is not always as rational as we might think, Lemnis saw the strong benefit of working with organizations with a strong message and that share our values and goals, albeit from a different perspective.

In November 2007 Lemnis became part of the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI). Since that date, the CCI has helped organizations and countries to become more focused on better, smarter ways to manage energy and carbon emissions focused, and promoting Lemnis LED lighting as a pioneer has been mutually beneficial

In 2008 Lemnis won the “Lighting up Africa award” from the World Bank for our Solar-LED solution. Lemnis does not just focus on lighting for the richer parts of the world, but also for off the grid regions like many places in Africa. The award recognized our commitment to provide solutions for all people on the planet and was a clear indication that institutions around the world appreciate the philosophy that making affordable lights for different parts of the world, does count.

In 2009, Lemnis together with the Dutch National Postcode Lottery (NPL) engaged in an unprecedented awareness campaign. The NPL was launched in 1989. It aims to support organisations working to create a fairer, greener world by raising funds and increasing public awareness with the help of a lottery. Today, the NPL is Holland’s biggest and most popular charitable lottery and supports 57 charity organisations. The Lottery used the Pharox 300 LED bulb as a prize to make people aware of energy conservation. Through this campaign Lemnis and NPL distributed around 1.75 million Led bulbs in the Netherlands: that’s 1 in 4 homes. A good example of a cooperation between a commercial and non-for profit organization that has a great impact.

One of the most important endorsement by a world renowned organization came in 2009. Lemnis was nominated Technology Pioneer 2009 of the World Economic Forum. A clear evidence of the technological achievements of Lemnis in the field of energy efficiency.

Lemnis’ 2010
As indicated above, Lemnis engages with other companies and organizations to optimize our energy saving impact. This also means that we often outsource activities to several companies worldwide. In terms of numbers this has resulted in a strong growth in turn over: from 2m euros in 2008 to 35m euros in 2009. With more than 2.5 million consumer LED products sold, the Pharox is world’s best selling LED bulb.

The company has grown from a start up with 10 employees to a company employing more than 40 people. These figures do not account for the jobs we have created through of our partnerships in India, China or our partners in Europe and the USA.

In March 2010 a consortium of African investors invested an amount of $35.7m in Lemnis to accelerate the growth of the company in Africa and other regions. This meant a valuation of Lemnis at $170m. Lighting companies have recently be acknowledged by the CleanTech venture Network as the hottest clean tech companies to invest into, and Lemnis led that pack. We firmly believe that as the markets for energy efficient lighting grow, Lemnis will be very visible as the lighting company with modern business models and fair propositions. And proving that an energy efficient LED light bulb becomes a symbol of transforming our worldwide industry into real efficiency, not optimization of inefficient production and consumption.

Perhaps the naming agency was more right than we realized at the time by naming the Pharox after the Pharos, the lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and a beacon for travelers worldwide: we aspire to being that beacon in the lighting industry.