In case you haven't heard there's a Presidential primary going on. Right now, and I'm sure for a few more months to come Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul are slugging it out to see who gets to compete against President Obama in November. With our very slow economic recovery still weighing voters minds every candidate is proposing ways to increase jobs here in the US. 

As a humble lighting designer I have my own jobs bill, OK maybe not a bill, but a sketch of a bill. I all it "The Creating the best Lit Nation on Earth to make more Jobs and Increase our Energy Independence Act." It's based on a recent DOE report showing how much energy the US uses through lighting. In total we use about 700 tera-watt hours of electricity through light sources - about 20% of the total US energy consumption. We can reduce that total, create jobs and make the nation more sustainable by taking up the following actions.

• Create a Federal Loan Program for Cities and States to Upgrade their Public Lighting. The majority of our public lighting is High Pressure Sodium, Mercury Vapor or Metal Halide. We can radically improve our exterior lighting and spur innovation by fostering the retrofit of our street lighting with LED heads that produce the same quantity of light with better color and less energy consumption. States can pay the loan back with the energy savings created by the new lights. This could potentially create thousands of jobs across the country.
• Expand and revamp the L-Prize Program. The L-Prize program was designed to spur innovation within the lighting industry to create an energy effiecient alternative to the 60 watt incandescent lamp. Thus far the contest yielded one new product that could change everything. The Philips L-Prize winner is set to hit the market this month. We should expand the program to go after linear fluorescent sources, which make up a huge amount of our lighting consumption. 
• Make all Federally Owned Buildings LEED Certified by 2020. Rather than mandate specific retrofits, the government should mandate that all federally owned buildings are LEED certified. Open up the design and build process to bidders from around the country and mandate the products used are made here in the USA. You'll be employing architects, lighting designers, general contractors and factory workers across the US. These buildings are a net investment over time as they consume fewer resources and reduce the public energy burden. If the program is successful, expand it to include state owned buildings. 
• Partner with Lighting Designers and US-Based Manufacturers on Public Lighting Projects. Here's the idea. The Federal, State and Local governments open up small pieces of land that are currently unused to lighting designers. Designers compete to design the space pro-bono and US lighting manufacturers sponsor the build by providing the products and covering the cost of labor to install it. Not only do you create some jobs in the local economy, but your promote lighting and lighting design as ways to improve the built environment, spurring investment from private business in their own property. 

There are lots of other things we could do like re-work the minimum luminance level requirements written into many building codes and more rapidly reduce the power density requirements to improve energy effieciency, but I thought we could stick with the carrots on this bill and save the sticks for when the economy is stronger. 

So GOP candidates and Mr. President. If you're reading this, feel free to steal liberally from this idea. I don't need credit, I just want to see us design better lighting and create a more beautiful country. We can do it.