As the "dual-carbon" goals have become a global consensus, every lamp and every billboard in the city has begun to be considered in terms of low-carbonization. Among the advertising carriers on streets and lanes, LED lightboxes are quietly becoming "low-carbon pioneers" - compared with traditional lightboxes, they not only have higher brightness and longer service life, but also can reduce energy consumption by more than 70%. This characteristic of combining practicality and environmental protection has enabled LED lightboxes to quickly replace traditional light source lightboxes in just over a decade and become the absolute main force of "low-carbon advertising".

Traditional advertising lightboxes have long relied on fluorescent lamps as light sources. This technology, born in the 1930s, has inherent defects in energy efficiency. Fluorescent lamps emit light through the discharge of mercury vapor, with an electro-optical conversion efficiency of only about 20%, and most of the energy is wasted in the form of heat. A 40-watt fluorescent tube, working 12 hours a day, can consume up to 175 kWh of electricity a year. Large outdoor advertising lightboxes often require dozens of tubes to work at the same time, and their annual electricity consumption can easily exceed several thousand kWh, which can be called "electricity guzzlers" in the advertising industry.

The emergence of LED lamps has completely rewritten this situation. As semiconductor light-emitting devices, LEDs have an electro-optical conversion efficiency of over 80%. Under the same brightness, their energy consumption is only 30% of that of fluorescent lamps. A 12-watt LED bulb, which is as bright as a 40-watt fluorescent tube, works 12 hours a day and consumes only 52 kWh of electricity a year, saving nearly 70% of electricity compared with traditional light sources.

The evaluation of low-carbon environmental protection cannot only focus on the use stage; the entire life cycle of the product is also crucial. In this regard, LED lightboxes have more prominent advantages.

The average service life of fluorescent lamps is only 5,000-8,000 hours. According to the working intensity of 12 hours a day, they need to be replaced in less than two years. Moreover, the mercury contained in the tubes (about 5-10 mg per tube) can enter the ecosystem through soil and water sources if not handled properly, causing long-term pollution. According to statistics, more than 1 billion fluorescent lamps are discarded in China every year, and most of them are not recycled professionally, becoming a hidden environmental risk.

The service life of LED lamps is as long as 50,000-100,000 hours, which is more than 10 times that of fluorescent lamps. This means that a set of LED lightboxes does not need to replace the light source within 10-20 years, greatly reducing the generation of waste. More importantly, LED lamps do not contain toxic substances such as mercury and lead. Their core materials are semiconductor chips and epoxy resin, which can be recycled through metal recycling processes after being discarded. In addition, the frames of modern LED lightboxes mostly use environmentally friendly materials such as aluminum alloys and recycled plastics, further reducing the carbon footprint throughout the life cycle.

The popularization of LED lightboxes is inseparable from the dual drive of policy guidance and technological innovation. In recent years, many places in China have issued "energy-saving renovation policies for outdoor advertising", clearly requiring that new and renovated advertising lightboxes must use energy-saving light sources such as LEDs. Take Shanghai as an example, the "Technical Specifications for the Setting of Outdoor Advertising Facilities" implemented in 2023 stipulates that the lighting power density of outdoor lightboxes shall not exceed 5 watts per square meter. This standard can only be stably met by LED lamps, forcing traditional lightboxes to withdraw from the market at an accelerated pace.

Technological iteration has continuously upgraded the low-carbon attributes of LED lightboxes. Today's intelligent LED lightboxes can automatically adjust the brightness through light sensors - reducing power during strong daytime light and increasing brightness when there are many people at night, further reducing ineffective energy consumption. Some lightboxes are also connected to solar power supply systems to achieve "zero grid consumption". In the field of materials, the application of new nano-coatings has increased the light transmittance of lightbox fabrics from 70% to 90%, which means that the light source power can be reduced by 20% under the same brightness.

From the huge advertisements on the outer walls of office buildings to the signs of community convenience stores, LED lightboxes are reshaping the advertising ecology of cities with the labels of "energy-saving, long-life, and environmental protection". Its rise is not only a technological replacement, but also marks the transformation of the advertising industry from "vision first" to "low-carbon first". When every glowing lightbox contributes to reducing carbon emissions, the night view of our city will become more sustainable and warmer.