Agenda item

This report provides an overview regarding South Kesteven District Council’s potential to upgrade District Council operated streetlights to energy efficient LED units.

Purpose of report

An overview regarding South Kesteven District Council’s potential to upgrade District Council operated streetlights to energy efficient LED (Light Emitting Diode) units.

Decision

1.     Cabinet recommended to Council the allocation of funding of £1 million to accelerate the replacement of the Council operated streetlights with LED energy efficiency lamps. The scheme to be funded as follows:

o   £500k Invest to Save Reserve

o   £250k Budget Stabilisation Reserve

o   £250k Local Priorities Reserve

2.    Cabinet requested that Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee review the current Street Lighting Policy with regard to further reducing energy costs at specific times and locations.

Alternative options considered and rejected

Option 1: Accelerate programme to upgrade all existing lights to LED. Indicative costs were obtained to upgrade all possible streetlight units to LED within a year of contract commencement. This included an allocation for the potential upgrade of obsolete street light columns where required, estimated at 5% of the total stock of lights. A dimming schedule between midnight and 6am was assumed, where lights were dimmed to 50% of full illumination, in line with current policy. An overall energy saving by upgrading to LED with 6 hours of dimming of 63% was assumed based on supplier projections.

Option 2: Accelerate programme to upgrade all existing lights to LED and implement policy to switch off lighting between midnight to 6am. This option used the same assumptions as Option 1, but rather than using the existing dimming profile assumed streetlights would be dark between midnight and 6am, with an assumed energy saving of 75%.

Option 3: Review provision of streetlighting with the aim to upgrade every other unit to LED and decommission remaining units. The potential to reduce the overall stock of streetlights which the Council had the responsibility to illuminate had also been explored.

Regarding option 3, consideration would need to be made on the placement of individual lamps to ensure the remaining provision of lighting was adequate around decommissioned columns. Once agreed, the Council would need to remove fuses from streetlights to be decommissioned at a cost per lamp. The lamps would remain liable for a standing charge for electricity when not in use. Once the light was declared as obsolete, the Council was obliged by the National Grid to potentially disconnect and remove lighting columns after a 2-year period, at a further cost. The Council also had a duty of care to ensure the obsolete lighting column was inspected annually to ensure they remained safe. Finally, adequate signage would need to be added to every lighting column decommissioned, to help minimise the number of reports to the Council of faulty lights. Given the number of impediments to decommissioning and removing lamps, detailed costs had not been provided to Cabinet.

Option 4: The Council could choose not to pursue a proactive programme of LED upgrades. This would require no upfront investment and lamps would only be replaced by LED when a streetlight has failed. This would mean a significantly longer programme of replacement and would need to have considered a potential scarcity of replacement parts for existing lamps.

Reasons for decision

South Kesteven District Council was responsible for 3893 streetlights within the district which were all funded from the Council’s General Fund.

The majority of lights operated by the Council were 35W (or 36W) low pressure sodium lamps, responsible for just over 4% of the Council’s total carbon emissions – a significant contribution.

Several different options had been considered in the past regarding the most efficient management of the Council’s stock of streetlights. Following a recommendation by Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee, Cabinet on 12 July 2018 considered and approved a policy, addressing how the Council’s streetlights were to be managed.

Following a decision at Cabinet on 11 June 2019, a project was initiated to accelerate the upgrade of the Council’s stock of streetlights to LED lamps, replacing the existing policy to upgrade only failed lamps. This allocated £100,000 from the Council’s Invest to Save reserve as part of a 12-year overall programme. Benefits noted from the upgrades included a reduction in electricity use and associated costs, with a consequent reduction in carbon emissions.

In tandem with project development work required for the main LED upgrades, repair and maintenance arrangements for existing lamps had also been reviewed. Current arrangements were for ongoing reactive maintenance of non-LED lamps where feasible, and where lamps were beyond repair they were now being updated to LEDs. Currently, there was no budget to replace every failed unit with an LED upgrade. To date, 699 street lights had been upgraded to LED.

Through upgrading existing units to LED (with capability for dimming), the energy reduction achieved in the latest month, across the whole stock of lights, was 12%.

Since the agreement of the Invest to Save budget, South Kesteven District Council, like many other organisations, had seen vastly escalating utility costs. The electricity budget for streetlighting for 2022/23 was set at £171k and the total spend for 2022/23 was £221k.

The original expectations of reinvesting savings from reduced electricity use could no longer be met, as the increased cost of energy had outpaced the savings made through reduction. There had been no agreed standalone budget for upgrading the streetlights to LED, beyond an existing fund for reactive maintenance of broken lights.

As a result of the sharp escalation in energy costs, the business case for an accelerated programme of upgrades to LED across the whole stock of streetlights became stronger. Prices for wholesale electricity and gas appeared to have ‘spiked’ last winter. Nevertheless, current costs remained at a historic high and, given the volatility of energy markets and potential for further disruption next winter, it was reasonable to expect continuing high prices for both gas and electricity.

Reducing energy consumption from streetlighting would contribute to the Council’s declared carbon reduction target of at least 30% by 2030.

Four options had been explored to fulfil the Council’s obligations to provide lighting in the most cost and environmentally effective way. It was recognised that several other options could have been considered but these will depend upon the scope and scale of any replacement programme.

The Finance and Economic Overview and Scrutiny Committee met on 22 June 2023 to review the four options, with particular regard to the financial, environment and service level implications. They agreed to pursue the full upgrade programme of Option 1 or 2, with the recommendation to allocate funding from Council reserves.

Whilst £1 million was a large outlay, it would mean that savings could be made on lighting in a relatively short period of time.

The Environment Overview & Scrutiny Committee would be asked to investigate whether streetlights operated by the Council would remain on or off at night.

Any impacts on surrounding wildlife would need to be considered; assurances on this would be sought through the operational stage of the LED rollout. In rural areas where there wouldn’t normally be a light source special coloured lighting could be considered.