Project to reduce the carbon output of street lights

A project has been completed to reduce the carbon output of county street lights.

The Council has finished an energy reduction project to convert all its street lights to lower wattage LED’s.

The Council maintains a total of 11,690 street lights and following some small initial trial programmes, it was decided to replace the remaining units with low energy LED lights over a 7-year project in order to achieve savings in both carbon output and electricity costs.

The Council’s own in house street lighting team have delivered the project in its entirety from procurement and design to installation.

The project has reduced carbon output from street lights over the seven-year period from 1,800 tonnes annually during 2015/16 to 400 tonnes for 2021/22.

Councillor Barry Mellor, Lead Member for Environment and Transport, said: “We declared a Climate and Ecological Emergency in July 2019 and developed plans to become a net carbon zero and ecologically positive council by 2030.

“I am pleased to see the conclusion of this project which is supporting our priority in tackling carbon reduction across the county.

“This lighting equipment installed has utilised the most up to date technology and energy efficient equipment including part night dimming and constant lumen output. The completed project has achieved significant reductions in electricity consumption, carbon output and energy bills.”