Cape Town – The City of Cape Town’s investment in energy efficiency has led to almost 45 000 street lights being fitted with energy saving light emitting diode (LED) lights so far, the city said on Sunday.
This included the recent successful retrofitting of 1100 street lights as part of a R3.8-million LED street lighting pilot in Burgundy Estate, Summer Greens, Eversdal, Bothasig, and Aurora. This had already lead to a 32 percent reduction in the electricity load usage, mayoral committee member for energy, environmental, and spatial planning Johan van der Merwe said.
The city’s energy efficiency programme had resulted in savings of more than R110-million over the past five years. Since 2010, the city had saved almost 80 000MWh of electricity and 79 000 tons of carbon through its municipal operations energy efficiency programme. This was the equivalent of the power needed to operate all of Cape Town’s street lights for a whole year.
Energy efficiency was central to the city’s Energy 2040 goals which aimed for the overall reduction of 37 percent in carbon emissions. Some 21 percent could be achieved through energy efficiency alone.
“We are saving our residents money over the long-term by investing in a more sustainable way of performing our core functions. At the same time, through our emphasis on procuring more ‘green goods’, we are enabling job creation in the local economy.
“The city will do whatever it can today to create a more financially and environmentally sustainable tomorrow,” Van der Merwe said.
Given the public sector’s significant purchasing power, the city now had integrated energy efficiency requirements into its procurement and was using greener technologies for certain projects, such as for lighting buildings.
The city’s LED building lighting retrofits had supported the growth of a local LED manufacturer, which had increased its permanent employees from 18 to 80 over the past three years, he said.
African News Agency (ANA)