What we do

Urban lighting is the second largest source of municipal greenhouse gas emissions (after heating), accounting for about one third of municipalities’ GHG emissions and up to 50 percent of their electricity bill. Urban lighting costs of Armenian municipalities account for more than USD 5 million per annum (power costs and maintenance). The capital city of Yerevan has the largest energy consumption and saving potential in its lighting sector: it accounts for approximately 80 percent of all urban lighting energy use in the country.

The overarching goal of the project is to save energy and to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by increasing energy efficiency of municipal lighting in the cities of Armenia via implementation of municipal investment programs and national policies. The project focuses on urban lighting sector, which covers all lighting installations managed and paid for by municipalities, such as lighting of streets, outside public areas, illumination of city buildings, lighting system in municipally-owned and operated buildings and facilities, and yards in residential areas.

The project’s activities are structured into four interrelated components:

- Audit of municipal lighting systems and capacity building for urban green lighting;

- Implementation of a number of pilot green urban lighting demonstration projects;

- Proposing institutional and financing mechanisms for sustainable replication of municipal energy efficient lighting programs;

- Promoting energy efficiency in the lighting sector on the national level via development and implementation of broad policy instruments, including mandatory phase-out of inefficient incandescent lighting, technical standards, codes and regulations.

Some results so far

Main quantitative achievements of the projects can be summarized as follows:

•        Upgraded and harmonized RA construction norms 22-03-2017 “Natural and Artificial Lighting” were adopted by the order #56-N of April 13, 2017 by the State Urban Develop-ment Committee and registered by the Ministry of Justice on April 26, 2017 at #11717171 (available here).

•        Demonstration projects on energy efficient upgrade of street lighting systems were implemented in 18 partner municipalities and municipal revolving funds were established and operated by 13 of them (see sample demo project factsheet here, and summarizing table and map on this page).

•        Optometric laboratory was equipped and operated at Yerevan Municipal Illumination CJSC, accessible to sector actors and educational institutions (see interior image on this page) with over 80 lighting devices tested so far.

•        Public awareness raising campaign was conducted (see details here) and several targeted seminars were held for stakeholders and professionals (available here).

Qualitative impact of the project’s implementation is multifold.

First, expansion of energy efficiency improvement projects in municipal lighting systems serve for development purposes of the communities, ensuring higher road safety, better comfort for residents, extended hours for public places use.

Second, municipal revolving funds introduced a transparent scheme of redistributing the available funds to purposes getting little to no attention otherwise.

Third, municipal revolving funds introduced a new culture to ensuring transparent and targeted use of finance made available due to saving accumulated as a result of energy efficiency improvement projects' implementation.

Fourth, educational support to the profile universities includes illustrative materials and tools and narrow-topic specifically developed bilingual textbook and so contributes to better skills of graduating specialists and higher quality of faculty.

Fifth, the optometric laboratory equipped by the project with modern devices and tools, introduces a new culture of testing and certifying a lighting product before using it, especially per its energy performance features.

Sixth, legal and regulatory improvements change the overall background and provide municipality representatives, developers, lighting equipment producers and importers with instructions per higher energy efficiency in their activities and products.