Los Angeles, California is set to be the first United States city to change their residential street lights from incandescent to LEDs. The bill which details the lighting changes was revealed this past Monday. L.A. hopes to reduce a significant amount of pollution with the lighting changes.
The change will take place over a five-year period, starting in July. The city of L.A. will replace 140,000 residential street lights, which is expected to save the city upwards of $10 million each year.
Not only will the LEDs assist in saving the city of L.A. money, it will potentially reduce carbon emissions by 40,500 tons. Former President Bill Clinton attended the unveiling and stated: “This is like taking 6,000 cards off the road. If every major city followed [L.A.’s lead], we could eliminate 2.5 coal-fired power plants.”
California, which is well known for its struggles with energy usage, could decrease their usage from 197 million kilowatt-hours to 132 million kilowatt-hours in the next decade. Los Angeles’ Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, said that this bill could make L.A. the “cleanest, greenest big city in the U.S.. We are building a bridge to a sustainable future.”
Wow, that is some good news!! Not only will it save electricity but CFLs also last considerably longer than incandescent bulbs. The only concern I have is an increase in mercury that would need to be disposed of when all of these bulbs eventually stop working. All in all, it sounds like a great idea!
Actually Matt, Los Angeles is replacing street lights with LEDs, not CFLs. LEDs are considered to have negligible amounts of hazardous materials unlike CFLs. LEDs are also said to last upwards of 10 times longer than CFLs, fancy eh?!!
That sounds like a great program. Just out of curiosity, I wonder how different they’ll look… You can spot the LED Christmas lights from the old ones because the LEDs look unique, and I wonder if there will be a subtle difference in the color of the light from the street lights?
This can have truly massive impact. For those who haven’t lived in LA or the surrounding region, this is like an entire small state saying that they are making this kind of switch. Bravo Angelinos!