Sommaire:

The citation for the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics was for “the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources”, thus suggesting that visible LEDs for lighting lead to global energy savings. As is well known among economists (but perhaps less among physicists, engineers and policy makers), the various rebound effects can severely affect the overall energy-consumption gains (if any) when a more energy-efficient technology comes to market. It is an open question to assess whether the III-N LED technology actually leads to energy savings. I will discuss the notion of rebound effect (notably direct and indirect rebound effects) in general, for semiconductor technologies and for the case of the III-N LED technology, notably in light of the surprisingly scarce literature on the topic. I will then discuss what I think this implies when discussing the impacts of our research practices and mostly the potential (social, economic and environmental) impacts of the technologies developed in academic laboratories.

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