In the fight against climate change, India has been able to reduce carbon dioxide emission to the tune of 4.63 million tons annually by replacing one-crore conventional streetlights with ‘smart’ LEDs.

These streetlights are illuminating 2.7 lakh km of roads, resulting in annual energy savings of 6.71 billion kWh and avoiding 1,119.40 MW of peak electricity demand.

On the occasion of crossing the one-croreth LED street light mark, power minister R.K. Singh announced the country will install 1.34 crore LED street lights by March 2020. This will help to save 9 billion units of electricity annually, thereby reducing CO2 emission by 6.2 million tonnes.

As on date, 1,502 urban local bodies across India have been enrolled under the Street Lighting National Programme and out of these, work has been completed in around 900 urban local bodies.

EESL has adopted the pay-as-you-save model wherein EESL makes the entire upfront investment in installing these street lights and the municipalities pay EESL from their savings in energy and maintenance costs over the seven-year contract period that guarantees a minimum energy saving of 50%.

The EESL is planning to bring Rs8,000 crore investment by 2024 to cover entire rural India in the next 4-5 years. It is expected that more than 30 million LED street lights will be retrofitted/installed by EESL.

Under India’s Street Lighting National Programme, Andhra Pradesh is leading the way among the states, with an installation of 28.9 lakh LED street lights followed by Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh with 10.3 lakhs and 9.3 lakhs, respectively.