The DLC’s New LED Technical Requirements – Designed to Meet this Moment

In just a few weeks, the DLC will publish significant revisions to our Solid-State Lighting (SSL) technical requirements, as well as updates to our Light Usage for Night Applications (LUNA) program. The first update to the DLC’s LED technical requirements since 2020, the combination of SSL V6.0 and LUNA V2.0 will accelerate innovation. By establishing clear, credible performance baselines, it helps the market highlight technologies that reduce energy use, improve spectral quality, and deliver with clarity and transparency, the responsible lighting that customers and communities are asking for.

Like all technical updates since the DLC began over a decade ago, these changes were framed, informed and revised through a robust stakeholder process involving years of consultation with lighting industry stakeholders, a call for feedback on updates to the requirements issued in the fall of 2024, and two rounds of public comment over the past eight months. Every detail of this update reflects thoughtful progress—bold where it counts, practical where it matters, and designed to drive lasting impact. 

So, why now?

Because the world and the lighting industry are moving forward. The DLC’s mission has always been to support a future where lighting, controls, and integrated building systems work together to reduce energy use, cut carbon emissions, and reduce light pollution.

We pursue that mission by defining trusted, third-party verified performance thresholds that help transform innovation into confidence, ensuring the products lighting our streets, businesses, and communities deliver real, measurable benefits.

Today, more than three-quarters of North American utilities and energy efficiency programs rely on the DLC’s technical requirements and Qualified Products Lists (QPLs) to identify high-performance, energy efficient solutions. Together, these programs validate savings for tens of thousands of commercial lighting projects every year, ensuring that quality lighting is driving market transformation on a continental scale.

Across North America, utilities are investing billions of dollars in energy efficiency and the DLC technical requirements help to ensure that every dollar counts. By setting clear, verifiable thresholds for lighting quality, efficacy, and controllability, the DLC makes it easy for programs to identify and incentivize products that meet state energy reduction goals and deliver proven savings and real impact for customers.

Our technical requirements and QPLs give utilities the confidence to stand behind their programs, validating measurable, cost-effective results and creating access to innovation that benefits everyone.

The good news is that energy efficiency programs work. The DLC’s analysis of US Department of Energy data indicates, for example, that using LED technology saved commercial and industrial buildings in the U.S. and Canada approximately 1,000 terawatt hours of electricity between 2020 and 2022, avoiding carbon emissions equivalent to running 1,700 gas power plants for one year. These are numbers that benefit all electric customers. Advanced lighting is proven to save energy while improving the comfort and functionality of the built environment.

Since customers are more likely to purchase lighting products using energy efficiency program incentives that improve their ROI, it follows that manufacturers and lighting companies can also benefit from the DLC’s consistent, transparent performance specifications, which are utilized by most US and Canadian lighting rebate programs and often referenced in state and federal procurements.

In fact, lighting manufacturers, distributors, and designers are among the most important industry stakeholders with whom the DLC regularly engages, whether through internal DLC committees, participation in external committees with standards development organizations, or in the creation of our technical requirements.

Our goal is to act as a liaison and facilitator, ensuring that all viewpoints shape the market as we continue to look toward the industry’s future. We not only welcome but actively seek out public comment and stakeholder engagement. It is built into every policy update, and every new set of technical requirements. For SSL V6.0, we received over 1,400 comments and personally reached out to dozens of individual commenters for further information.

It’s been over five years since the DLC’s last significant SSL policy revision, and in that time the LED lighting industry has developed and grown, now dominating the commercial lighting market and encompassing an expanded menu of controls and advanced technologies. Set to take effect in January, SSL V6.0 optimizes opportunities to take commercial LED savings to the next level by further encouraging the integration with networked controls and luminaire level lighting controls (LLLCs) as enablers of connected, smart, efficient building systems. Research conducted in the past several years has produced data pointing to a vast potential for deep energy savings that could be tapped through wider adoption of networked lighting controls and NLC integration with building systems such as HVAC.

Also in the past half decade, first-generation LEDs have begun needing replacement, opening a crucial window for future-proofing energy savings by ensuring retrofits include the most efficient and controlled products possible. The QPL will be expanded to include solar luminaires, a growing need for parks, municipalities, and storm damage recovery efforts.

In the past five years, there’s also been a significant increase in awareness and concern about light pollution, as well as LED lighting’s impact on this growing problem. Released along with SSL V6.0, the LUNA V2.0 technical requirements respond to this issue with expanded options around color spectrum and new product specifications for lighting in ecologically sensitive areas. Products on the LUNA QPL have been evaluated for mitigating light pollution, while also meeting all our SSL technical requirements for energy efficiency. 

As a mission-rooted, independent nonprofit, the DLC is committed to ensuring our resources align with the best available science, technology, and sustainability practices. Our new technical requirements reflect this as we seek to balance progress with predictability in pursuit of reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions, especially as demand and costs for electricity increase.

While some are content with the status quo, we see a greater opportunity.

Guided by collaboration across utilities, researchers, manufacturers, and industry experts, the DLC’s new specifications set the stage for what’s next—lighting that saves energy, protects the environment, and serves communities better than ever before.

This is more than an update. It’s a turning point, and we’re just getting started.

The final release will be ready in early November.

Please share your thoughts by emailing info@designlights.org.