South Africa Embraces Campaign For Sustainable Lighting
South Africa, which earlier this month hosted the turbulent climate change conference (COP17) in Durban, has announced it is supporting en.lighten, a global initiative to phase-out inefficient lighting by 2016. South Africa promised to transition from inefficient incandescent lamps to more efficient compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) by 2016.
en.lighten was launched in 2009 through a partnership between the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Private sector partners include Osram AG, Phillips Lighting and the National Lighting Test Centre of China (NLTC).
"South Africa is working with UNEP and its Global Partnership to share these lessons learned with other African countries willing to phase-out and reap the benefits that a transition would bring," said H.E. Ms. Duipo Peters, South Africa's Minister of Energy. "We encourage all countries that have not yet phased-out inefficient lighting to join the UNEP Global Partnership and work with us to move towards an efficient lighting world to mitigate climate change," she added. Energy efficiency is unanimously regarded as the emissions-curbing measure that can yield the fastest sustainability results since it does not rely on new technologies. The International Energy Agency says that almost 20 per cent of total global electricity production and six per cent of worldwide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are caused by electricity for lighting. en.lighten hopes to reduce these emissions by 50 per cent.
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Antonio Pasolini is a Corporate Social Responsibility writer for Justmeans. A media graduate with a specialization in film and TV, Antonio Pasolini is the editor of Energyrefuge.com, a top web destination for alternative energy products, news and commentary. With more than a decade's experience in journalism, Antonio has written on a wide range of topics, from technological breakthroughs by the brains at MIT to a trip to sustainable projects in the Amazon. One of his new projects involves an eco print magazine to be distributed from a selection of London shops.
