Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Ups and downs for cleantech in Q1

But still as IKEA points out LED lighting consumes 85 percent less energy than incandescent lighting, and lasts 20 times longer.So-called light emitting diodes are semiconductors that emit light, so LED lighting can basically turn lighting digital.

IKEA has long been aggressive when it comes to sustainability. IKEA has phased out plastic bags, and has also been putting solar on the roofs of its stores, and now is the company with the 4th most solar capacity in the U.S.

In IKEA’s announcement, they included a survey on LEDs, and it’s clear that people aren’t necessarily all that educated on the benefits of LEDs — well, at least Americans:

• Less than one-half of Americans (43 percent) have at least one LED bulb in their house compared to China (80 percent), Russia (65 percent) and Sweden (61 percent).
• Only 27 percent of people know that these bulbs last 20 years.
• Only one-third (34 percent) of Americans say LED lights provide similar lighting quality to incandescent bulbs, compared to China (77 percent) and Russia (61 percent).

Startups that are innovating around interesting LED technology includeDigital Lumens, Switch, and BridgeLux.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The growth and promise of the LED market
• Flash analysis: lessons from Solyndra’s fall
• Green IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times

While LED lighting has caught on for commercial spaces, like spotlighting merchandise and for outdoor use like street lighting, it has yet to make its presence felt inside homes. That’s mainly because of its high, largely double-digit price tag, which leads to a much longer payback period, considering that consumers don’t keep lights on for as long as businesses do. However, despite a slower adoption by consumers, a McKinsey & Co. report last year projected that LED lighting could make up nearly 60 percent of the total lighting market by 2020.

Bridgelux has come a long way, too. The company, founded in 2002, has raised $230 million in venture capital and now employs over 250 people worldwide. It started off as an LED chip developer and shipped its first product in 2004. In 2009, it added a new line of products that takes a bunch of chips – each of which is a tiny, roughly 1-millimeter square – and packages them into what it calls an array. Since then, it’s further packaged the arrays into modules for sale as well (Bridgelux’s customers take the modules and add more components to create the light bulb or lighting fixture that you can buy in store). Bridgelux’s LED products are used in a variety of settings, from a Sheraton hotel in Korea to department stores in Switzerland to a YMCA in Idaho.

The company is spearheading a technology transition to use silicon as the substrate on top of which it grows the gallium-nitride for making the LED chips. Bridgelux has also teamed up with Toshiba and last week the two companies announced they had solved some key challenges for making the silicon wafer a good substitute, such as minimizing cracks in silicon and getting a uniform wavelength distribution across the gallium-nitride layer, Lester said. Solving these problems means Bridgelux and Toshiba believe they could mass produce LED chips using silicon wafers to get the same performance as chips that traditionally rely on sapphire wafers.

Next up, Toshiba, which has made an undisclosed investment in Bridgelux, will start pilot production this year, and the two companies expect to start selling LED products with silicon inside during the first half of 2013, Lester said. Bridegelux currently hires contract manufacturers in China and Taiwan to make its sapphire-based products.

Check out the photos from my tour of the lab:

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The growth and promise of the LED market
• Opportunities in LED Solid-State Lighting
• Green IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times

The lighting business, by contrast, is one of the slowest industries in the world.

Think about it for a moment. Consumers and businesses around the world spend over $100 billion on light bulbs and fixtures annually, and over $600 billion on electricity to power them.

Yet the lion’s share of that money gets thrown out the window. The incandescent bulb, still the most popular bulb with consumers in the U.S., typically only uses 10 percent of the power fed into them to create light. The rest gets turned into heat. That explains why you see them in Easy Bake Ovens and reptile terrariums. In all, 23 percent of the electricity in the U.S. gets gobbled up by lighting; 18 percent goes to power bulbs and the remaining 4 to 5 percent gets used to run air conditioners to eliminate the waste heat they generate.

This rampant consumption, moreover, isn’t easy to modulate. Only a small percentage of lights are connected to networks for dynamic dimming. If the lights above your head right now were dimmed by 40 percent to save power, you probably wouldn’t notice, but the capability probably doesn’t exist.

A digital future

Everything else has gone digital. Lighting is literally the last vestige of the vacuum tube era.

It wasn’t always this way. Lighting was once one of the most innovative industries on the planet. Thomas Edison’s bulb, unfurled on December 31, 1879, fundamentally changed human society. People could suddenly work and socialize around the clock. The midtown section of Broadway became known as the “The Great White Way” because of the blazing arc lights. A nighttime stroll was no longer a scary prospect reserved for emergencies. Neon and fluorescent lights soon followed.

But then complacency began to creep in. Manufacturers concentrated on driving down costs and boosting volumes. Innovation became an expensive luxury rather than a necessity. Consumers found it easier to replace bulbs all of the time rather than demand something different.

Luckily, the situation is now changing. Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) — which are semiconductors that emit light — only consume a fraction of the power of conventional bulbs. Car manufacturers, TV makers, street light manufacturers and makers of industrial equipment have already turned to LEDs to reduce power.

In the past few years, LED makers have also managed to cut the price and boost the performance of their products. Early LED bulbs emitted a cold light you could describe as Alien Autopsy White. But now you can go to Home Depot or Lowe’s and pick up LED bulbs that emit warm light — just like the light that comes from incandescent bulbs — for $25 or less. The bulbs will save you $10 or more a year and last for decades.

Networked lighting

Even more importantly, LED companies will soon demonstrate the latent intelligence of light. LEDs are chips, after all, which means they can be infinitely tuned or connected to networks.

Festival Hydro will soon give — as in for free — 100,000 LED bulbs equipped with wireless chips to residential and business customers in Stratford, Ontario that have smart meters. Through the smart meters and wireless connections, customers will essentially let Festival Hydro dim their lights during  peak periods or off-hours. (Bridgelux will provide the LED technology while Anycomm will provide the software for controlling the system for the pilot.)

If trials like these succeed, utilities will start giving out millions of free LEDs. The power consumption avoided will let them postpone investing millions into new fossil fuel power plants for years.

By integrating other chips and transistors, LED bulbs can be turned into security alarms, carbon monoxide sensors and motion detectors. Some stores want to deploy LEDs to monitor the length of checkout lines for better service.

You will even see bulbs that help you sleep better. Think of all this as a marriage between lighting design and Moore’s Law.

It has taken the electronics industry and the lighting industry years to get to this point. Consumers are attached to old fashioned bulbs and really don’t want to spent too much time thinking about light bulbs and most manufacturers have been happy to go along with the status quo. But high power prices, climate change and escalating air pollution demand changes. Fortunately, those changes will also open the door to indispensable applications and use case scenarios that we don’t even know about yet.

The future looks brighter every day.

Bill Watkins is the CEO of Bridgelux while Rob Praske is the CEO and founder of Anycomm.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The growth and promise of the LED market
• Opportunities in LED Solid-State Lighting
• Flash analysis: lessons from Solyndra’s fall

1). GreatPoint Energy and China Wanxiang Holdings: At one point GreatPoint Energy, a company that converts coal into cleaner-burning natural gas, had an investor list that was led by the who’s who of Silicon Valley’s greentech ambitions, including Kleiner Perkins, Advanced Technology Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Khosla Ventures. But according to DowJones Venture Wire last week, GreatPoint Energy has now developed a $1.25 billion partnership with industrial parts supplier China Wanxiang Holdings, including a $420 million Series D equity investment.

The article calls the deal “the largest ever by a Chinese corporation into a venture-capital-funded U.S. company.” GreatPoint Energy will use the money partly to build a large-scale plant in China to convert coal into natural gas using GreatPoint’s process called hydromethanation.

2). Smith Electric Vehicles and Wanxiang Group: GreatPoint Energy isn’t the only one that’s teamed up with Wanxiang. I reported last week that electric car company Smith Electric Vehicles is in the process of raising $40 million from private investors. And days after that article, Smith announced that Wanxiang Group has signed a letter of intent for a $25 million equity investment into Smith and an up to a $75 million investment in a JV between Smith and Wanxiang to make electric school buses and commercial vehicles.

Smith filed for an IPO in November 2011. The company sells electric trucks and vans for companies’ fleet operations and counts customers like Coca-Cola, Fed-Ex, Staples, and Sainsburys, as well as the military.

3). Bridgelux and Kaistar: California-based LED lighting startup Bridgelux announced last week that it’s getting $25 million from Kaistar, a joint venture between two public Chinese companies, Epistar and Kaifa. Bridgelux plans to use the funds for research, development and manufacturing of LED chips and packaging for light fixtures.

Bridgelux had already raised a massive $220 million in private funding and in previous years Bridgelux was on the short list for an IPO.

4). LanzaTech and Chinese steel and coal companies: LanzaTech uses microbes and fermentation to convert the carbon monoxide from waste gas from industrial operations and other sources into biofuels and chemicals. Founded in 2005, LanzaTech originally hailed from New Zealand and in recent years has started building demonstration projects in China.

LanzaTech is already working with two Chinese steel manufacturers – Baosteel and Capital Steel — to turn waste gas from their operations into ethanol. LanzaTech said it has installed equipment for a demonstration plant at Baosteel and plans to start production later this year. Last November, the biofuel company also announced a plan to work with a large Chinese coal producer – Yankuang Group — to produce fuels and chemicals from synthesis gas produced by Yankuang’s gasification equipment.

5). PowerGenix and China City Construction Corps: San Diego-based PowerGenix spent the past year hunting for a partner in China and announced in January that it’s forming a joint venture with China City Construction Corp. to produce its nickel-zinc batteries for the so-called microhybrid vehicles. By the end of this year, the joint venture, called CCCC-PowerGenix Clean Energy Co., plans to set up a factory to produce 400,000 batteries per year, or 200,000 watt-hours total.

6). TerraPower and the Chinese government: Nuclear startup TerraPower doesn’t have an official deal to build a reactor with China’s National Nuclear Corporation (despite media reports), but TerraPower investor Bill Gates (yes that Bill Gates) says that TerraPower is having preliminary discussions with the Chinese government over its nuclear tech.

TerraPower is developing nuclear traveling wave reactor technology, which is a relatively new type of small nuclear reactor design that can use the waste byproduct of the enrichment process, or waste uranium, for fuel. TerraPower’s backers have long said it will likely commercialize its technology first outside the U.S.

7). Brammo and the Hong Kong government: Electric motorcycle maker Brammo says it’s scored a deal to supply the Hong Kong government and police force with its electric motorcycles. Brammo says the Hong Kong government will replace its existing gas-powered motorcycle fleet with Brammo’s Enertia.

Hong Kong’s Water Supplies Department will use the Enertia Plus, while the Hong Kong police department will use the 2012 Enertia Plus “LE,” or the Law Enforcement edition, which has features for police. Brammo’s exclusive dealer in Hong Kong is JCAM Advanced Mobility Company.

8). Silevo and Chinese venture firms: California startup Silevo is building a hybrid solar cell design that uses single-crystal silicon as the base layer on which it adds a “tunneling oxide layer” and a layer of amorphous silicon to alter the voltage and current of the cells. Silevo raised $55 million in venture capital from investors, including three China-based firms: DT Capital (affiliated with Madrone Capital),  NewMargin Ventures, and GSR Ventures (connected to Mayfield Fund).

Silevo is in the process of building a 30 MW factory in Hangzhou, China, and expects to bring the factory into full production mode during the first quarter of 2012. The company plans to add another 200 MW in 2013 if demand is there.

9). Boston-Power and the Chinese government: Boston-Power, a lithium-ion battery maker, raised $125 million in venture capital and Chinese government incentives to move its manufacturing base to China. Boston-Power plans to build a lithium-ion battery cell factory near Shanghai and a technology center in Beijing where its staff will work with customers to integrate Boston-Power’s cells into electric drivetrains.

10). Sunpreme and Chinese investors: Solar cell maker Sunpreme raised roughly $50 million in a series B round to build a factory in Jiaxing, China. Investors include International Finance Corp. (part of the World Bank Group), Capricorn Investment Group and China Environmental Fund III (managed by Tsing Capital in China).

Images courtesy of Boston-Power, Silevo, Dainis Matisons, PowerGenix, Bridgelux, Smith Electric Vehicles and GreatPoint Energy.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Green IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times
• Flash analysis: the Fisker debacle and its implications on investing, innovation, and government incentives
• Frenemy mine: The pros and cons of social partnerships for online media companies

VCs pumped $1.83 billion into 161 deals in North America, Europe, China and India during the second quarter of this year, down 33 percent from the $2.75 billion in the second quarter in 2010 and 10 percent below the $2.03 billion that private cleantech companies raked in during the first quarter of this year.

While solar was the biggest draw in 2010, energy efficiency technologies have been steadily attracting more money and deals in 2011. The energy efficiency sector took in $428 million (38 deals) during the second quarter of this year, followed by solar with $363 million and 27 deals, biofuel and biomaterials with $237 million and 12 deals, and transportation with $176 million and nine deals.

Energy efficiency is a broad term that covers several industries, including hardware and software that monitor and conserve energy use in homes and businesses, efficient light fixtures and air conditioning and heating systems, building materials made with low-carbon processes, and anything else that makes data centers more energy-efficient.

The growing amount of venture capital in energy efficiency tech reflects a change in investment philosophy that has been echoed by many VCs recently: Putting money in energy software and IT could generate more predictable returns in a shorter time frame, compared to some of the capital-intensive investments in solar and biofuels.

Some of the top deals of the second quarter included $80 million raised by LED lighting developer Bridgelux in California, $94.4 million by solar cell maker Suniva in Georgia, $60 million by biofuel developer Enerkem in Canada, and $100 million by electric car startup Fisker Automotive.

Although biofuel didn’t receive as much backing from investors over the past year, it’s one sector that has been more active in using initial public offerings to raise money. California-based Solazyme grossed $227.2 million from its IPO. KiOR, in Texas, took in $150 million in gross proceeds (not including options for its underwriters to buy more shares) from its own.

Overall, the second quarter saw 11 cleantech IPOs worth $1.99 billion, which is slightly less than the $2.1 billion in the first quarter. The $800 million IPO by China’s Huaneng Renewable Energy, part of a government-owned energy group, was the biggest of the lot. Six of the 11 IPOs took place in China.

In terms of mergers-and-acquisitions, French energy company Total’s $1.37 billion purchase of a 60 percent stake in SunPower was a headline grabber. And so was the $2.3 billion purchase of Landis+Gyr by Toshiba.

The Cleantech Group also listed the most active venture capital firms, based on the number of rounds they participated in, and these top 5 included: Kleiner Perkins (12 rounds), Draper Fisher Jurvetson (6), Harris & Harris Group (5) and Good Energies (4).

Image courtesy of David Beyer via Flickr.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Ups and downs for cleantech in Q1
• Cleantech first-quarter 2013 analysis and outlook
• The perils of cleantech investing: KiOR and the long-term, high-risk view

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Green IT’s Q4 Winners: Wind Power, Solar Power, Smart Energy
• Green IT Overview, Q2 2010
• After Solyndra: analyzing the solar industry

The company’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday reflects optimism for the LED market’s growth this year and beyond. Lighting Science’s shares have been traded on the OTC Bulletin Board, and now it wants to enter the big league of Nasdaq under the same symbol “LSCG.” The Florida company hasn’t priced the shares it plans to offer.

Lighting Science designs and makes LED lamps and other light fixtures for the residential, commercial and industrial market. The company has been selling LED lighting for nearly a decade and owns factories in Satellite Beach, Florida and Monterrey, Mexico. The Mexico plant started production only last November. It also hires Citizen Electronics to make its products in Asia.

The company increased the number of people on its payroll, including contractors, to about 600 at the end of last year from 210 at the end of 2009, according to its SEC filing.

LED lights are energy efficient and long-lasting, but also more expensive than compact florescent or halogen lights. Investors have been willing to put money on LED lighting to help drive down its cost because it’s targeting an existing and vast market, unlike other greentech such as solar and fuel cells. Bridgelux, which makes LED chips and arrays, recently raised $20.7 million. The company opened a factory in California only last year and launched a “plug-and-play” LED fixture for industrial and commercial building owners about a year ago.

Lighting Science cited a bullish projection by Strategies Unlimited that says the LED lighting market will grow from about $874 million in 2010 to over $4.3 billion by 2014.

The company isn’t profitable, however. Lighting Science posted a loss of $155.38 million on $30.33 million in revenue for the first nine months of 2010. During the same period in 2009, the company posted a loss of $35.25 million on $21.97 million in revenue.

Lighting Science’s two main customers are Osram Sylvania and the Home Depot, which accounted for 21 percent and 6 percent of the sales respectively during the first nine months of 2010, the SEC filing said. Its main competitors include General Electric, Philips, Panasonic and Cooper Industries.

To read more on greener telecom and data centers and smart grids check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• How to Cut Carbon from Mobile Networks
• Smart Energy Emerges As Layer in Telco’s Energy Home
• Smart Algorithms, the Future of the Energy Industry

Photo courtesy of Lighting Science Group

The company opened a factory in California and was making an effort to scale up its production last year, so I would bet these funds will likely be spent on continuing that process. Last year Bridgelux also brought in former Seagate CEO Bill Watkins as its new captain to help ramp up production. Watkins previously told me that he could use his experience with scaling and streamlining manufacturing of storage products in the lighting space.

A year ago Bridgelux launched its Helieon LED light system, which is a “plug-and-play” LED solution for industrial and commercial building owners (see photo). Bridgelux says at a high enough volume, the product retails for less than $20 per unit, and has a lifespan of more than 10 years.

Bridgelux has been around awhile and raised $23 million in 2007, and another $40 million in 2008. For a couple years it was embroiled in a patent litigation suit with LED competitor Cree, but that suit was settled in 2008, and Bridgelux more recently launched a Lighting Services Group, as well as its LED Array Technology. The company is backed by Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, DCM, El Dorado Ventures, Harris & Harris Group and VantagePoint Venture Partners.

Is this latest funding what they call a pre-IPO round? Bridgelux has been on the short IPO list for about a year, and will need to raise more money to compete with large LED manufacturers. Expansion into a market like China, will also need more funds, and Watkins has talked about expanding the company’s operations to China, because its government offers not only help in financing, but also in creating demand for LED lighting products (through city government purchases).

To read more about LEDs check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Opportunities in LED Solid-State Lighting
• A 2011 Green IT Forecast
• What A Bloom Electron Is Worth By The Numbers

“If Android finds its way onto TVs, Blu-ray players and other devices, that’s a great opportunity for us,” Ronen said. That’s because, by creating a way for Boxee to run on Android-enabled devices, Google could actually make it easier for the startup to reach its consumer base through the Android app store.

“If someone hears about Boxee from a friend, the process between hearing about it and getting it onto the TV is a cumbersome process,” Ronen said. Boxee users today must download the application, install it, connect their computer to a TV and find a way to control that application — either through an iPhone or Android remote control app. But by developing an app that runs on the Google TV platform, Boxee could simplify that process.

Boxee is increasingly interested in getting its software on consumer electronics devices. The startup recently posted a job listing for a “Lead iPad and iPhone App Developer.” But Boxee will most likely extend its app development to Android devices, particularly for those that are part of the Google TV platform.

While creating a Googe TV app could facilitate downloads of the Boxee software, Ronen admitted that there were risks involved in competing with Google on TVs and other connected devices. “Obviously there are risks. [Google TV] could be complementary, or it could be dangerous,” Ronen said.

That said, Ronen’s view on how viewers might want to connect to the Internet on the television differs from what Google demoed at its I/O developers conference last week. Google showed a browsing experience on Google TV that looked very much like what one would see on a PC browser. But Ronen doesn’t think that’s how people want to use the Internet on the TV.

“We do have a difference in some vision for how video on the web will be consumed,” Ronen said. “I don’t think TV is a great browsing device… I think people will gravitate toward a 10-foot optimized experience rather than what we have today.”

Related content on GigaOM Pro: New Business Models For Pay TV Services (subscription required)