In the Middle East region, MELA members have seen a raft of new regulatory initiatives targeting the lighting sector that have entered or about to enter into force in the coming months. As with other regions around the globe these lighting policy initiatives aim to prohibit inefficient and low-quality light sources, control gear & luminaires from entering the GCC markets and effectively set new criteria for manufacturers & marketers of lighting products. These initiatives have successfully regulated the energy efficiency of individual products like lamps and control gear resulting in significant energy savings in various countries in the region such as UAE and Saudi Arabia. However, as a result of the recent paradigm shift in lighting, many lighting products supplied in the region today are put on the market in the form of integrated, intelligent luminaires or ledinaires where product components making a lighting system are indistinguishable from one another in the overall system.
Therefore, as the industry moves from component based to integrated solutions for luminaires, energy efficiency regulations are rather useless. This is because the energy use of a luminaire is determined by the lighting design and the way the product is applied in its application and not simply by the efficiency of it component parts.
To help regulators meet this challenge, the Middle East Lighting Association, the lighting industry representative in the region is working on a Lighting System Legislation (LSL) approach that focuses on lighting systems put into service. The initial details of this were presented by Kay Rauwerdink from Philips Lighting at the Lighting Summit in Dubai.
