LA to flick switch on world's largest LED rollout

The largest ever retrofit of a city's street lighting network is to get under way in Los Angeles later this year, with 140,000 existing streetlight fixtures in the city being replaced with LED units designed to cut power use by 40 per cent, it was announced yesterday.

The Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting will replace lights over a five-year period after receiving a loan from former president Bill Clinton's charitable foundation to fund the project.

The Bureau said the initiative will save the city $48m (£34m) and some 197,000 tonnes of CO2 over seven years, and $10m for each year thereafter.

Unveiling the initiative, Clinton called on other cities to switch to LED technologies. "If every city followed the example of Los Angeles and reduced the electricity used by their streetlights by 50 per cent, it would be equivalent to eliminating more than two and a half of those coal plants per year," he said.

Street lighting costs represent one of the largest components of a city's utility bill, typically accounting for between 10 and 38 per cent of energy costs, according to a study by the Clinton Climate Initiative. With nearly 35 million streetlights in the US, about one per cent of all electricity consumed is estimated to be used by street lighting systems.

The new LED lamps will have a lifespan of 12 years – twice that of current streetlamps – and will be fitted with remote monitoring units that report failures directly to the Bureau of Street Lighting for immediate repair.