Mediterranean municipalities join a street lighting exercise for energy efficiency implementation

• The exercise will point to energy efficient solutions, using a new online tool developed by the Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency together with United for Efficiency.
• By incorporating efficiency into existing and planned infrastructure systems, costs can be controlled, service delivery can be improved and access expanded without necessarily adding to the cost of the service.

18 May 2020. The Mediterranean local communities play a key role in the energy transition. Cities are in the best position to take action on the ground and meet local needs in order to address a growing energy demand, the climate emergency and the need to find innovative and efficient solutions for their citizens, inter alia.  The Mediterranean region is rich in renewable energy sources and has a huge potential to increase energy efficiency in areas such as street lighting, cooling and heating and building construction and renovation.

Through the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) Energy Platforms, a regional dialogue forum to exchange on energy issues in the Mediterranean, more than 20 municipalities from Albania, Algeria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro and Palestine have joined the Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency in a new exercise. Using a toolbox for self-rapid assessment developed by the Centre, the municipalities will gain valuable insights on the potential to accelerate energy efficient street lighting implementation. The toolbox provides solutions for the lighting sector with the aim to accelerate the energy efficiency at a local level.

Efficient street lighting can reduce energy demand

Street lighting in many places represent up to 40% of the electricity bills at a municipal level, with electricity use for lighting expected to grow about 50% in the next two decades. However, energy efficient lighting solutions, such as LED, can help reduce demand by 40 to 60 %.

Working with United for Efficiency, the Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency has developed this toolbox – soon to be made available online – that allows the user to obtain a comparison of the savings that the different available solutions could bring to their specific case. This includes a benchmarking between the baseline with the potential savings that LED lighting could bring, with and without control features.

The outputs of the toolbox point to the specific energy and financial savings and avoided GHG emissions that could be achieved together with an overview of the required investment and payback period.

Efficiency at local level

Under the umbrella of a Memorandum of Understanding signed at COP25 in December 2019, the Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency and the Union for the Mediterranean – in line with its Energy Transition@Local Initiative – have joined forces in this exercise in order to support municipalities in their efforts to achieve a sustainable energy transition.

During 2019, the Copenhagen Centre presented the Union for the Mediterranean with several cases for assessment of energy efficient street lighting from Argentina, sparking the interest for joining the exercise, to achieve the potential to accelerate energy efficient street lighting implementation in the Mediterranean region.

Moving on to implementation

The Union for the Mediterranean and the Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency will then work together to explore the possibility of a second phase, focusing on moving into the implementation of the identified energy efficiency measures, expecting to grasp real impact from this collaboration in order to support local authorities in their energy transition.