Green Investment Bank encourages Transport Scotland to switch to energy-efficient ‘green’ motorway lights

The UK Green Investment Bank – which is due to hold its first annual meeting next month in Edinburgh –  is encouraging Transport Scotland to switch to LED lighting on Scotland’s trunk roads.

Transport Scotland, the Scottish Government arms-length quango, is responsible for all infrastructure and investment on Scotland’s motorways and major inter-city trunk roads – such as the A9 between Perth and Inverness and the A90 from Dundee to Aberdeen.

GIB considers that there is a potential cost saving of £200m across the UK by switching to low energy streetlighting.

The Green Investment Bank (GIB) which has an office in Edinburgh, is also trying to persuade a number of local councils in Scotland – who have responsibility for non-truck roads – to ‘go green’ by switching from traditional sodium streetlights to LED lighting.

The public sector in general – including local authorities and the NHS in particular – are ‘low hanging fruit’ for the GIB in achieving potentially large-scale energy-efficiency savings from central and local  government.

Gregor Paterson Jones, Managing Director, Energy Efficiency, GIB, said: “The Green Investment Bank has identified making the switch to low energy lighting as a way for the public sector to save money and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

“We are working with local authorities across the UK, as well as all the UK devolved administrations, to help them make the change to LED lighting, and to do so in a cost effective way. We are encouraged by the positive response we have had so far.”

GIB is also grappling with a ‘fragmented’ energy-efficiency bureaucracy in local government and the NHS where the ‘green’ benefits of climate-saving technologies are scattered among architects, builders, planners and assorted personnel and in various ‘business transformation’ silos.

Last month, GIB held its first marketing and information seminar on public-sector energy-efficiency savings for NHS England in Birmingham and it is planning a similar event for NHS Scotland later this year.