Dimming Coventry’s Street Lighting Will Save 40%

Posted on 18. Feb, 2010 by Ross in United Kingdom

Using lighting more efficiently - and using energy efficient lighting - is an obvious way to save substantial quantities of money, energy and carbon. However, it has taken public bodies a long time to finally wake up to the clear sense behind the business case for the adoption of energy efficient technologies and practices.

According to the Telegraph, Coventry City Council have decided to break ranks from the army of local government bodies in the Ostrich Block, with an ambitious plan to become the UK’s first city with centrally-controlled dimming street lighting.

Over the next 25 years, the entire city’s 28,000 street lights will be replaced with newer energy efficient lighting with full dimming capabilities, which will be hooked up to a central control centre to coordinate the level of lighting across the city.

As well as turning the lights down or off in the early hours when they are not needed, the lights could also be turned up on accident black spots or after football matches.

Coventry City Council aim to cut their energy costs and carbon emissions by 40% by the programme, but with the £250m project costing almost £9,000 per light, questions will be raised at whether the return on investment is justified, and whether the council could have opted for a cheaper scheme which could have yielded equal or better results.

Questions will also be raised about the timing of the project, shortly after it was announced that the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme was changed so that street lighting had escaped inclusion. That means that Coventry City Council will still have to pay the same amount for carbon credits under the UK’s forthcoming cap-and-trade scheme, since carbon reductions from the dimming street lighting will not be measured under the scheme.

With such a substantial level of funding being driven into the new street lights, it might have been ploughed into other initiatives which could have lightened the cash flow burden that the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme inflicts on businesses and local councils, as well as enabling them to perform better in the CRC league tables.

Other councils have begun trials and schemes involving street lighting, such as Devon Council’s car park lighting initiative, but Coventry City Council’s announcement is the first case of a city council investing so heavily in energy efficiency.

Image by dreamsjung @ Flickr