Unique EU Project: Osram Lamps for India

2008-Jul-05 | The emerging market of India is now also switching to energy-saving lamps. The research magazine Pictures of the Future reports that Osram has become the world’s first lamp manufacturer to participate in a United Nations climate protection program that involves exchanging used light bulbs for energy-efficient lighting units. The new lamps will lower electricity bills in hundreds of thousands of Indian households, while helping to stabilize the power outage-prone Indian power grid and reduce CO2 emissions. In return for providing this replacement service, Osram receives emission certificates from the UN that the company can sell as it wishes. Energy-saving lamps are a key element of the Siemens portfolio of environmental products that the Group recently presented in London. The company generated revenues totaling €17 billion with the portfolio in 2007.

Osram has been preparing for the project since 2007 with the RWE energy company as part of the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism, a program for implementing climate protection projects in developing countries. The lighting specialist will provide up to 700,000 Dulux EL Longlife lamps for Indian households, with residents paying the symbolic price of roughly 25 euro cents, about what a conventional light bulb costs in the country. The new lamps consume 80 percent less electricity than light bulbs, thus significantly lowering energy costs. In addition, their use leads to lower peak loads, which will help reduce the frequent outages that plague the Indian power grid.

The high-quality lamps, which have a service life of roughly 15,000 hours, will also lead to a reduction of approximately 400,000 tons of CO2 emissions over the next ten years. The lamp components will be shipped from Germany and Italy and then assembled at Osram facilities in India. The energy-saving lamps can be switched on and off nearly countless times, and are also remarkably stable during power outages.

The pilot region for the exchange of bulbs will be the state of Andhra Pradesh on India’s east coast. A maximum of two bulbs will be exchanged in each household to ensure that more affluent Indians will not have an advantage over those in lower-income groups. Osram will collect the old bulbs and recycle them in an environmentally-friendly manner. In addition, specially developed measuring devices will be installed in a random sample of 200 households to record average daily use of the lamps. The data will be electronically analyzed, reviewed by the TÜV inspection firm, and forwarded to the UN.