Contractor appointed on Edinburgh City Council’s Energy Efficient Street Lighting project

12 February 2018

The Energy Efficient Street Lighting project will replace approximately 54,000 street lights across Edinburgh with energy efficient lamps by the end of 2020. The new lamps provides a crisper light and can last for more than 20 years.

To pre-empt rising energy costs, £24.5m is being spent on the lamps which will save the tax payer £54m over 20 years. The new technology has many other benefits including improved CCTV visibility and reduced CO2 emissions which helps to comply with Scottish government energy efficiency legislation. To give more centralised control over Edinburgh’s lighting, a street lighting monitoring and control system (CMS) will be installed, providing real time monitoring of potential faults.

Councillor Lesley Macinnes, transport and environment convener for the City of Edinburgh Council, said: “When we rolled out these energy efficient lights as a pilot project in 2014, they were very well received by local residents, who told us they preferred the crisper, brighter light to the orangey glow of the old, inefficient street lights. Now that we've appointed a contractor, we can make the final preparations for rolling out energy efficient street lights to communities right across the Capital.”

Jack Keillor, divisional director at Currie & Brown, currently on secondment with City of Edinburgh Council added: ”This is an exciting time for the team knowing that over the next three years we are going to be visiting every public road, street and alleyway across the city of Edinburgh and coming up with local lighting solutions to suit numerous conservation areas and UNESCO's World Heritage site.”