The LED Trap

LinkedIn Post 02: The LED Trap

Your facilities team has fitted LEDs across half the portfolio. It's cheap, it's fast, and every building now has new lighting.

But you're still 15% away from your carbon budget target.

Here's why: LED retrofit is approximately 5-10% of available carbon reduction per building. The other 85-90% requires interventions that cost more and take longer. Heat pump installation. Fabric improvement. Deep retrofit.

An AI system trained on cost efficiency will always recommend LEDs first. It's the rational choice given the constraints. The problem is: you eventually run out of LEDs. And you still need to do deep retrofit. Which was perpetually deferred while the system optimised for cheaper options.

This isn't a technology problem. It's a governance problem.

You need objectives that are carbon-first, not cost-first. You need sequencing rules that enforce deep retrofit priority. You need your planning horizon aligned with five-year carbon budgets, not annual capital cycles.

Without that, LEDs are a ceiling disguised as a floor.

#FacilitiesManagement #Decarbonisation #CarbonBudgets #Sustainability #GovernanceMatters