CITY OF SYDNEY LIGHTS UP

Lord Mayor Clover Moore said the LED lighting program has already reduced associated emissions and energy use by over 40 per cent.

“Replacing 6,450 conventional lights will save nearly $800,000 a year in electricity bills and maintenance costs,” the Lord Mayor said.

“Sydney was the first city in Australia to install the new LED street and park lights across its entire city centre, joining other major cities such as Berlin, Barcelona, Los Angeles and San Francisco.”

The NSW Government is now following the City’s lead, encouraging councils across Sydney to replace conventional street lights with LEDs.

In a public survey conducted by the City after an 18-month trial, more than 90 per cent of people said they found the new lighting appealing. Three-quarters said it improved visibility.

LED lamps emit a bright white light, and are longer lasting and significantly more energy efficient compared to incandescent light bulbs created in the 19th century.

Since the introduction of LED lights, the City of Sydney has welcomed the announcement by Ausgrid (formerly Energy Australia) to follow suit on progressively replacing local road street lights with LED lamps.

Public lighting accounts for a third of the City of Sydney’s annual electricity use and 30 per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions. The new LEDs will reduce emissions by 2,861 tonnes each year, the equivalent of taking 940 cars off the road.

The City of Sydney was the first carbon-neutral Australian government and has set itself the ambitious greenhouse gas reduction target of reducing emissions by 70 per cent below 2006 levels by 2030.

A joint venture of GE and UGL Limited (UGL), selected by tender, has successfully commissioned over half of the new LED lights as part of the $7 million, three-year project.

Additional facts about LEDs:

• The Nobel Prize for physics has recently been awarded to Japanese and American scientists for their work that led to the invention of modern-day LEDs.
• The prestigious prize was awarded for their development of blue-light emitting diodes – LEDs – allowing the manufacture of white-light lamps. Before this was achieved in the early 1990s, diodes could only create red or green light.
• LEDs can save up to 75 per cent of energy compared with incandescent light sources, lasting up to 25 times longer.