Roadway Lighting Retrofit: Environmental and Economic Impact of Greenhouse Gases Footprint Reduction

• Main Authors: Adam Sȩdziwy, Artur Basiura, Igor Wojnicki
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-10-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: street lighting; energy efficiency; greenhouse gases; CO₂ emission; LED lighting; lighting control
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/11/3925

Roadway lighting retrofit is a process continuously developed in urban environments due to both installation aging and technical upgrades. The spectacular example is replacing the high intensity discharge (HID) lamps, usually high pressure sodium (HPS) ones, with the sources based on light-emitting diodes (LED). The main focus in the related research was put on energy efficiency of installations and corresponding financial benefits. In this work, we extend those considerations analyzing how lighting optimization impacts greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction and what are the resultant financial benefits expressed in terms of emission allowances prices. Our goal is twofold: (i) obtaining a quantitative assessment of how a GHG footprint depends on a technological scope of modernization of a city HPS-based lighting system; and (ii) showing that the costs of such a modernization can be decreased by up to 10% thanks to a lowered CO<inline-formula> <math display="inline"> <semantics> <msub> <mrow></mrow> <mn>2</mn> </msub> </semantics> </math> </inline-formula> emission volume. Moreover, we identify retrofit patterns yielding the most substantial environmental impact.