More than 800 rural villages in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous region, will be lit with 76,000 solar street lighting units provided by Philips Lighting, as part of a government initiative to drive sustainable electrification in rural areas in the country.

The LED-solar street lighting project will provide electricity to 800 rural villages across 40 districts in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, as part of a flagship scheme of the state’s Chief Minister and is developed by Philips Lighting in partnership with the Uttar Pradesh New and Renewable Energy Development Agency.

This Climate Group blog entry is part of LED=Lower Emission Delivered project. (Photo Courtesy of The Climate Group)

Krishnan Pallassana, India Director, The Climate Group, comments: “This project shows the good things that happen when companies, people and the government work together. The importance of LED street lights in terms of safety, emissions savings and money savings is clear, and The Climate Group is thrilled to see our partner Philips Lighting working to improve safety and quality of life for villagers in Uttar Pradesh.”

Similar projects from Philips Lighting have resulted in major benefits for the local community, spurring the local trade economy and improving life quality. These initiatives are particularly beneficial in a region that already suffers from prolonged power cuts, which sometimes last 4-5 hours a day in rural areas.

The Climate Group has long advocated the benefits of LED street lighting around the world and in 2014, began a global consultation program in partnership with Philips Lighting to address the remaining barriers to LED scale up. At Climate Week NYC we also launched a new campaign LED = Lower Emissions delivered to encourage local governments, cities and utilities to drive full scale adoption of energy efficient LED street lighting around the world by 2025.

In India, we are aiming to improve living conditions of rural communities by connecting them to clean energy as part of our core project Bijili – Clean Energy for All. Over the last two years Bijli has reached over 60,000 people, delivering affordable and reliable solar power and LEDs to rural villages.

The project was driven by the fact that nearly 50% of India’s rural population has little or no access to grid based electricity and relies on dangerous kerosene lamps as its primary source of lighting. India’s government also highly subsidizes kerosene for lighting, spending US$2 billion per year for lighting alone. A transition to a LED lighting system would result in annual savings of 6.7 billion litres of kerosene, corresponding to around 17 million tons of CO2 avoided - and improved health and living conditions for the local population.

Mark Kenber, CEO, The Climate Group, comments on LED street lighting: “As an emissions-cutting and money-saving technology, LED street lighting is the big no-brainer. Our global trials and stakeholder consultations have shown that, when it comes to tackling climate change, LEDs are the lowest of the low hanging fruit and easiest to implement. With the number of street lights around the world likely to hit 350 million by 2025, local governments, utilities and financial institutions need to work together to ensure that all new and existing street lights are LED or of equivalent energy efficiency by 2025.”