Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 31 May 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Challenge and Opportunity for Local Authorities in Climate Action: Discussion

Mr. Paddy Mahon:

If I could give another example, and Mr. Boland might want to come in there, in the area of our public lighting we have made significant progress. We have I think 500,000 public lights. In and around 200,000 have already been retrofitted to LED, so they are significantly reducing the energy consumption but we need to understand how does that head over to reductions in overall emissions. We have a programme to replace the other 300,000 between now and 2025 so we are going to see a significant energy efficiency but as to how that follows through in reductions in emissions, and real reductions in emissions, there is work to be done there. We need to understand that not just on our own but in partnership with policymakers and Departments. One thing is to replace every public light in the country with an LED that is a more energy-efficient source of light but we probably need to do more. We probably need to get more out of that asset. To get more out of that asset we probably need to understand what is involved in what is called trimming and dimming. Do we dim the lights at certain times of day and do we do turn them off at certain times of the day? These are significant policy decisions-----