Taiwan will be the first country in the world to phase out traditional street lighting following the Cabinet’s approval Nov. 14 of a two-year program replacing mercury-vapor bulbs with light-emitting diodes.
“The initiative is part of ongoing efforts promoting the local LED industry through large-scale installations and applications,” Cabinet spokesman Sun Lih-chyun said. “It also underscores the government’s commitment to green policymaking.”
Set to kick off early 2015, the NT$5.49 billion (US$178.44 million) project involves 692,000 street lights nationwide. It is projected to slash annual power usage by 640 million kilowatt-hours, electricity bills by NT$1.1 billion and maintenance fees by NT$346 million. Estimated savings for local governments are pegged at NT$7.23 billion over the five-year warranty of the new lamps.
The LEDs have an average luminous efficacy of over 100 lumens per watt and a lifespan of six-plus years—a threefold improvement over mercury lights.
Sun said the move is an extension of three similar projects beginning in 2012 that have 284,000 LEDs installed to date. Citing a recent survey conducted by Industrial Technology Research Institute, he said the LEDs have delivered electricity savings totaling 230 million kilowatt-hours a year and carbon emissions reductions reaching 120,000 metric tonnes.
When the project is fully implemented, the lights will bring down Taiwan’s carbon emissions by 330,000 tonnes per year while increasing output of the local LED sector by NT$6 billion.
Taiwan was the second country in the world to adopt LED traffic lights and first to set up related national standards in 2008, according to the Cabinet.
