A straight answer to the question - Are emergency lights eco-friendly? - is that they are not. These lights produce a lot of glare on the streets where the emergency vehicles ply and distract other drivers. The lights dissipate heat continuously. Even though the heat dispersion from a single vehicle may not be much, when you calculate the total heat the atmosphere is absorbing from the emergency lights atop the thousands of emergency vehicles plying the streets every day, the heat emission could be substantial. And since emergency lights are in most cases accompanied by the background music of sirens, whenever emergency lights are used there is the accompanying noise pollution as well.

While this is so, one redeeming feature is that attempts are being steadily made to make emergency lights more and more eco-friendly. One way in which manufacturers are doing this is by making emergency lights smaller and low profile. Though the main reason for trying to make emergency lights low profile is to aid in stealth operations, smaller lights are greener in effect than larger lights. One of the reasons for it is the reduced heat emission of a smaller beacon or light bar. A smaller light would obviously generate less heat, whether it is mounted on the roof of the vehicle or inside it. When a small light is installed in the vehicle interior, the lesser heat generation also translates into reduced demand on the air conditioning system of the vehicle. This too, in turn, minimizes atmospheric pollution.

When smaller emergency lights are mounted on the roof of the vehicle, the situation becomes eco-friendly in another sense also. With a smaller light, the vehicle offers less resistance to wind. Lesser wind resistance translates into improved aerodynamics for the car and resultant fuel savings, and this is what manufacturers are constantly trying for. A drag coefficient of about 0.05 could be achieved by a most suitable aerodynamic shape for a vehicle and though smaller emergency lights alone will not bring about this, smaller lights definitely help in reducing the drag.

Another eco-friendly turn emergency lights are taking is the use of LED lights. Heat generation of LED lights is much low compared to incandescent lights, and if LED can be used more and more in emergency lights, this too will result in reduced heat emission and thus cause less atmospheric pollution. Energy consumption of LED emergency lights is also lower than that of conventional lighting technologies in that it consumes only about one third of the energy used by halogen lights. Lesser energy use also lessens the amount of green house gases emitted into the atmosphere.

Operators of emergency vehicles can make their own contribution to making emergency lights eco-friendly. Some emergency vehicles use too much light in that besides the light bar on the top, they may mount an additional light inside, or add a strobe light to the headlight. Unless the situation leaves the operator with no choice, operators can reduce the number of lights. They can also refrain from using emergency lights when the situation is such that going at breakneck speed is not going to redeem things in any way.

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