Taking Action

Leading councils have implemented a great variety of actions to progress sustainable public lighting, but there are some common themes or basic steps:

1. Take stock of your existing situation and establish council action plan.
2. Clarify and consolidate internal management of public lighting, including data management, technical understanding and capacity, and sustainable public lighting strategies and policies.
3. Make changes within council control, for example planning and designing new installations and council-owned lighting, and community engagement.
4. Build the business case and garner senior management and council support so that council is prepared for broader changeovers.
5. Create a regional action group with other councils in your distribution business and identify your technical options and the strategic barriers to realising them in your state (e.g. market, regulatory and/or technical).
6. As a regional group, approach your distribution business, LGA, energy authority and regulator and negotiate process/es to overcome the barriers. This may include trials, tariff negotiations, advocacy, research and/or financial modelling.
7. Determine financing model for changeovers (e.g. bulk procurement, Revolving Energy Funds, energy performance contracting, etc).
8. Change streetlighting on a 1:1 or bulk changeover basis! Contact contractors and consultants for further assistance.

For case studies and tools on each action area, follow the links above.

To see what one council asked us about choosing technology for changeovers see the Q&A Service.

Tips:

• Start implementing easier actions that produce quick wins, and progressively work towards greater achievements.
• As well as the above, your council may identify further opportunities based on it’s knowledge of the Australian Standards, public lighting stock, legislation, and tariffs.
• This one page fact sheet on bulk changeovers will assist councils to begin the process of bulk changes to minor road lighting.

Use this Actions Checklist for a summary of actions that other councils in Australia have undertaken on sustainable public lighting.

Contribute to this site!

If you've taken action on sustainable public lighting, let us know via email. Your news, updates and/or other information may be added to the Toolbox, enabling others to follow your lead.