South Korea plans to spend 107 trillion won ($84.5 billion), or 2 percent of its annual GDP, in green industries over the next five years, the presidential office said in a statement on Monday. The investment, mainly for encouraging environment-related industries and technologies such as renewable energy, LEDs (light-emitting diodes), smart power grids and hybrid cars, is expected to create up to 1.81 million jobs, the government said.

Two new lamps from GE Consumer & Industrial—a 7-watt GE Energy Smart® LED PAR20 lamp and a 10-watt GE Energy Smart® LED PAR30 lamp—enable restaurants, retailers and other commercial customers to make significant strides toward general lighting with white light-emitting diodes (LEDs). These products of ecomaginationSM, available as spots or floods, feature advanced optical control to concentrate the white LED light on the targeted area and effectively diminish wasted extraneous light.

New developments in gallium nitride (GaN) LEDs could lead to a revolution in lighting for the home and office in five years, says a leading UK materials scientist, Professor Colin Humphreys of Cambridge University.

Japan’s OKI Electric Industry (TOKYO:6703) and OKI Data Corp., which markets under the OKI Printing Solutions brand recently announced that the OKI Group will increase its LED (light-emitting diode) production for print heads used in its non-impact printers, and enhance new LED-related businesses. This will be achieved by acquiring an LED production facility in Japan’s Takasaki City in Gunma Prefecture with a ‘clean room’ that is approximately twice the area of the room used currently.

Everlight Electronics Co., Ltd., currently Taiwan’s biggest LED packager, has recently bought 15.9% of Tecore’s shares to secure supply of LED chips as it expands output to meet rising demand, according to an article on Taiwan Economic News. Everlight acquired the Tecore shares through a private-equity placement, in which Tecore put up 25 million shares for sale to raise NT$350 million (US$10.6 million at US$1:NT$33).

Chuck Swoboda Participates in Presidential Roundtable On American Innovation and Clean Energy Technology Chuck Swoboda, chairman and chief executive officer of Cree (Nasdaq:CREE) joined President Obama at the White House today to discuss the latest developments in energy-efficient technologies. Cree, based in Durham, North Carolina, is a market-leading manufacturer of LED (light-emitting diode) products.

Recently, Solid State Lighting has been a crucial and celebrated element to becoming a partner of global environmental protection.  Using LEDs to replace traditional, high power-consumption lighting systems seems to be the likely trend and solution to reducing power consumption. For the past 26 years, Everlight Electronics, Co., LTD. has endeavored to improve LED technology to address the issue of energy saving and made significant progress in being a pioneer for Green energy.

Evident Technologies Inc. announced the commercial availability of its Evidot LED products based on semiconductor nanocrystal technology. Whereas traditional LEDs are available in a limited set of standard colors (blue, green, red, etc.), Evident’s new products enable LEDs to emit any color, including high-quality white light (see video).

Elation Professional has introduced a moving head that can move . . . anywhere. And a color-changing brick that doesn’t require a wall   to be plugged into. The company added two amazing new “wireless” fixtures to its Event Series of battery-powered DMX-compatible RGB LED portable lights: the Event MH W System and Event Brick System, a moving head and brick color wash, respectively.

AIXTRON AG yesterday announced that it has recently received a further multiple system order from Epistar located at the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park, Taiwan. The order, to be delivered during 2009, was received in Q2 and will commence delivery in Q3 of 2009. This recent order comprises of CRIUS® Close Coupled Showerhead® (CCS) reactors and AIX 2800G4 HT Planetary Reactor® systems for volume production of GaN-based LEDs.

Barco, a global leader in creative LED technology, has recently announced the world's first transformable LED screen for U2's latest world tour. With its 360° shape, the LED screen surrounds the band while performing and can change shape in all directions during the concert. The screen has 500,000 pixels of video, making it the biggest LED screen ever used in concert touring.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has just released the second draft of ENERGY STAR performance criteria for three SSL luminaire categories: outdoor pole-mounted area and roadway luminaires, outdoor wall-mounted area luminaires, and parking garage/canopy luminaires. The Proposed Category “A” (near-term applications) additions to the Outdoor Area & Parking Garage area include the below: Minimum Light Output Luminaire shall deliver a minimum of 1,000 lumens (initial).

iLEDm is the only manufacturer that has introduced backlight technique into LED packaging. This technique is called LEM (LED Packaging Module).

Diodes Incorporated (Nasdaq: DIOD), a global manufacturer and supplier of high-quality application specific standard products within the broad discrete and analog semiconductor markets, has introduced a family of three new LED drivers that provide a cost-effective and small form factor solution for small LCD screens used across a wide range of portable consumer electronics, such as portable media players, personal navigation devices and digital photo frames.

A historic light-art concert in Jena, Germany, featured a color-changing performance by 170 LED-illuminated weather balloons in a custom installation engineered by a team assembled by Future Lighting Solutions. Super-sized balloons hung throughout the concert hall changed color on a pre-programmed schedule paralleling the mood and tempo of the music, utilizing RGB LED modules built with LUXEON® Rebel LEDs as well as a closed-loop color and brightness management system to achieve color consistency from balloon to balloon.

Philips Lumileds yesterday announced immediate availability of its breakthrough LUXEON Rebel phosphor converted amber (PC Amber) LED. The new LUXEON Rebel sets performance standards for color stability and light output performance. Users will see 2-5 times more light output and dramatically less color shift compared to typical amber LEDs. LUXEON Rebel PC Amber delivers typical flux of 70 lumens at 350mA.

Supertex (NASDAQ: SUPX), a provider of high voltage analog and mixed signal integrated circuits (ICs), has recently introduced the HV9985, a three channel LED driver IC designed to provide high LED current accuracy through closed loop control of the output current. The IC is ideal for driving multiple strings of backlight or edgelight LEDs in LCD televisions.

austriamicrosystems has added the AS1115 to its LED driver portfolio, which combines display driving and key scanning functionality to provide a simple front panel solution. This eliminates the need for a separate microprocessor to provide the front panel display, making the AS1115 well-suited to seven-segment or dot matrix user interface displays for set-top boxes, VCRs, DVD players, washing machines, microwave ovens and other white good or personal electronic applications.

Edison Opto, a Taiwan based high power LED packaging manufacture, will debut the latest Federal module series.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) has today begun marketing an LED-UV (ultraviolet ray) ink-drying system using light-emitting diodes (LED) which enables significant energy saving in printing. The system, which MHI has commercialized, leveraging its know-how as a leading printing machinery manufacturer, is suitable for installation on larger sized (DIAMOND V3000 Series) sheet-fed presses that can accommodate sheets up to 1,050mm (41-11/32 inches) wide.

Micrel Inc., (NASDAQ: MCRL), a provider of analog, high bandwidth communications and Ethernet IC solutions, has recently rolled out the MIC3230/31/32, a new family of dedicated high brightness LED drivers. These devices are the first in a new series of high brightness LED drivers targeting solid-state lighting and general illumination applications. This LED driver provides the flexibility of driving 1W, 3W and higher power LEDs that are available on the market today.

Avago Technologies, a supplier of analog interface components for communications, industrial and consumer applications, recently announced one of the industry’s smallest high-brightness 3-Watt LEDs for use in a wide range of solid-state lighting applications.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced on June 29 a $346 million investment from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to expand and accelerate the development, deployment and use of energy-efficient technologies in all major types of commercial buildings as well as new and existing homes in the U.S. See the press release "Obama Administration Launches New Energy Efficiency Efforts".

National Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE: NSM) Monday introduced the industry's first high-side light-emitting diode (LED) driver that enables dual LED operation for the camera flash function in portable, battery-powered multimedia devices. The LM3554, a member of National's PowerWise(R) energy-efficient product family, drives one or two high-current LEDs for flash applications in handheld devices such as mobile phones, smartphones and portable scanners.

GE Lumination, the LED business of GE Consumer & Industrial, has released the new Tetra® miniMAX LED System, which is claimed to be “the brightest solution for shallow-depth channel letter applications available today”. Tetra miniMAX is over three times brighter and illuminates a surface area that is four times larger than previous generation Tetra® Mini, according to the company, making it the perfect solution for sign OEMs and business customers needing to see better results—visually and financially.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has recently released revised L Prize competition requirements. As the first government-sponsored technology competition, the L Prize is designed to accelerate development of high-quality, high-efficiency solid-state lighting products to replace the common light bulb. The competition will award significant cash prizes, plus opportunities for federal purchasing agreements, utility programs, and other incentives for winning products.

LSI Industries Inc. (Nasdaq:LYTS) yesterday announced the following two developments:

Albeo Technologies announces the retrofit of the Renaissance on Turtle Creek (Dallas, TX) parking garage with the company’s C-Series solid-state light fixtures. Albeo's C-Series LED fixtures replaced 175 Watt HID fixtures, providing a long-term sustainable lighting solution.

ON Semiconductor has introduced the NCP5680 supercapacitor-optimized LED flash driver capable of delivering up to 10A for photo flash and video light in ultra-slim camera phones and compact digital cameras.

LEDtronics last week added the T8/bi-pin LED lighting tubes to its green-technology lineup. The series LED48T8-288-001W bi-pin LED fits into standard G13 bases and is designed to directly replace conventional T8 fluorescent tubes that provide general lighting for commercial, residential and architectural lighting applications, according to the company.