Bright future for efficient lighting
Each year, we spend around $660 million and generate around 2.65 million tonnes of greenhouse gases to meet our lighting needs in New Zealand. There’s plenty of room for energy savings through encouraging uptake of more efficient lighting technologies – and that’s just what the Efficient Lighting Strategy has been developed to do.
Government and industry joined forces to come up with the Strategy which will reduce the use of energy-hungry lighting and assist consumers to choose and use energy efficient lighting solutions.
Key objective
A key objective of the Strategy is a 20 per cent reduction in the amount of electricity we use for our lighting by 2015. One of the ways this will be achieved is by removing the most inefficient lighting from the market through Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS), which will be introduced over the next three years.
The initial MEPS on incandescent lamps, halogen lamps and compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), scheduled to commence from October 2009, are expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save a total of around $494 million by 2020.
Consumer choices
As inefficient lighting is phased out, it is essential that consumers have access to a range of quality, affordable lighting alternatives.
Already, industry has developed a range of lamps that look like incandescent light bulbs but instead of tungsten filaments they use halogen technology which is around 30 per cent more efficient. These are expected to become widely available over the next year.
The Electricity Commission’s successful programme to subsidise CFLs is expanding to include a range of other efficient lighting technologies.
The Strategy has been developed by the Efficient Lighting Group, made up of representatives from EECA, the Electricity Commission, Lighting Council New Zealand and other key lighting industry representatives.
