Local authorities are turning to LED lighting systems to combat rising energy costs, according to a new report on ‘street furniture.’
Street furniture is the term given to objects installed along streets and covers a vast range of sectors including healthcare, transport, residential developments, retail, restaurants, bars, sports and leisure.
But a report by AMA Research has found that local authorities dominate the sector, accounting for over 75% of total spending on street furniture.
A lot of this spending goes towards street lighting, and it’s predicted this will increase as local authorities move to replace outdated lighting systems with more energy efficient LEDs.
White streetlights near green trees
Editor of the Street Furniture and Lighting Market Report UK 2022-2026 and Head of Content at AMA Research, Abdul Tan touch, said: ‘With energy costs for non-energy efficient lighting increasing rapidly, more local authorities have been adopting options such as LED systems. These typically offer 100,000 hours of light, compared with 15,000 for traditional bulbs such as sodium, and it has been suggested that local authorities could cut their energy expenditure by around £100m per annum by switching to LED streetlights. As well as being more energy efficient, these new products also have longer lifespans and therefore will require a lower long term spend on replacements and maintenance.’
Maintenance of older street lighting accounts for a significant share of the market, with 50-55% of spending going towards maintenance in 2021 and 45% accounting for new projects.
The street furniture and lighting sector has been under pressure due to the pandemic causing hold-ups with construction activity in 2020, leading to a fall in prices of LED’s.
In related news, LED streetlights
LED streetlights reduce insect populations by 50%, according to researchers at the University of Newcastle.
LED streetlights reduce insect populations by 50%, according to researchers at the University of Newcastle.
The negative impact that light pollution has on insects is well known. However, this is the first investigation to reveal the negative impacts of ‘eco-friendly’ LED lights.
The researchers found that the abundance of moths and caterpillars in hedgerows under LED streetlamps was 52% lower than in nearby unlit areas.
This compared to a 41% lower abundance in hedgerows lit by sodium lighting.
Douglas Boys from Newcastle University, who led the study, spent more than 400 hours sampling for caterpillars along roadsides at a total of 55 lit and unlit sites in the Thames Valley over the past three years.
Previous research on light pollution has focused on adult insects, but studying caterpillars, which are a lot less mobile, has enabled the researchers to get more precise estimates of the impacts of street lighting on local populations.
Professor Darren Evans of Newcastle University’s School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, a co-author of the study, added: ‘Light pollution is one of the few causes of biodiversity loss that has easy solutions. Ultimately, we need a balance between protecting both public safety and wildlife, by ensuring that lighting is well-designed, away from important habitats and switched on for limited times.’
The rapidly increasing prevalence of LED lights, which are often much brighter as they are so energy-efficient and cheap to run, is likely to increase the negative impacts of light pollution on insects.
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