The Climate Group partners with the Global Lighting Challenge, to reach 10 billion energy efficient LEDs around the world.
The Climate Group announced its partnership with the Global Lighting Challenge (GLC), an initiative launched by the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) to promote energy efficient lighting around the world. The announcement today was made during the official launch of the initiative in Paris.
The GLC aims at promoting all forms of energy efficient lighting by setting the goal of reaching 10 billion high-efficiency, high-quality and affordable advanced lighting products such as LEDs around the world, and participants agree to make tangible, specific and bold commitments to advance energy efficient lighting.
Everyone is welcome to join the lighting challenge: national and subnational governments to promote supporting policies, standards and drive regional adoption, cities and companies to adopt more energy efficient lighting solutions, and lighting retailers and manufacturers pledging to standardise and sell high-efficiency, high-quality LED lighting products. Commitments from participants will be reviewed on a yearly basis and best practice showcased on the GLC platform.
Along with The Climate Group who will focus on accelerating scale-up of energy efficient street lighting, other partner organizations include leading energy efficient lighting initiatives such as the UNEP en.lighten program, 4E Solid State Lighting Annex, and the International Partnership for Energy Efficiency Cooperation (IPEEC).
Ahead of the launch, the GLC has been endorsed by a growing coalition of CEM governments including France, Australia, China, Germany, India, South Africa, Mexico, Russia, the UK, the US as well as the Director General for Energy of the European Commission.
The Climate Group has long recognized the staggering potential for energy savings that LED street lighting can provide. Recent estimates reveal that an overnight global transition to highly efficient LED lamps could avoid 801 Mt of CO2 emissions, equivalent to displacing nearly 684 coal-fired power plants around the world. In the off-grid lighting sector, displacing fuel-based light sources like kerosene and candles with solar-powered LED lanterns could save an additional $25 to $33 billion in fuel costs alone.
Our city LED street lighting trials and consultation events around the world revealed that the majority of cities want to upgrade to energy efficient LED lighting, and that technological barriers have now been overcome.
To help accelerate global roll out of energy efficient street lighting, at Climate Week NYC The Climate Group called for every city and utility around the world to seek to switch to LED lights (or as energy efficient) by 2025 with the launch of a new campaign ‘LED=Lower Emissions Delivered’ which is focussed on direct actions and interventions to drive scale-up and support cities to achieve the 2025 adoption target.
Mark Kenber, Director at the Climate Group comments on the announcements ‘The Climate Group is excited to announce their partnership in the Clean Energy Ministerial’s Global Lighting Challenge (GLC). At this key moment where national leaders from around the world come together in Paris for COP-21 there is an urgent need for not on only reaching an agreement to prevent dangerous consequences of a warming climate, but for global initiatives such as the GLC to priroritise key solutions that can help them achieve it. We believe energy efficient LED lighting is one of the easiest solutions to implement and a readily available technology to reduce carbon emissions and achieve a prosperous low carbon future. We are looking forward to contribute to achieve the 10 billion LED lighting target and beyond.’
As a partner of the Global Lighting Challenge, The Climate Group will help focus attention on the potential for LED city street lighting, bringing its experience achieved through an 8 year-long journey as a key advocate for the benefits of energy efficient street lighting.