Hungarian Schools Illumination Programme - Awards Winners 2010 (Category Demonstration)
Channel: euenergyweek
Date: 2012-02-21

GE began working on the 'Schools Illumination Programme', which is still ongoing, in March 2006. The purpose of this programme is to create high standard lighting and heating systems in school buildings without state financing - the project is funded solely by the energy savings made by the programme. A consortium was founded to execute the programme with GE as the partner for the lighting component of the project.
GE's work on this project started with an assessment of the schools in District 8 in Budapest and analysed the electricity consumption and projected energy savings.
GE then installed light fixtures and lamps with reduced energy consumption and maintenance costs. Over 1400 schools have been retrofitted to date and a further 1500 are registered for possible upgrades. This has so far led to results of energy savings of 40% in Budapest for lighting alone. According to the Hungarian Ministry of Education, the expected cost of the lighting upgrade programme is $80 million (€54 million) and the expected savings throughout the duration of the programme are $310 million (€210 million).
This project began in Budapest and is being rolled out across the country to other Hungarian cities. From the positive experience of this programme and project model, GE has also become a key technology supplier for similar projects to do with outdoor lighting in Romania and Bulgaria.
GE is very proud of this project, which has just been approved as a Benchmark of Excellence under the EU Covenant of Mayors initiative. We have been working to promote it in Eastern Europe and have issued a press release. It was also presented at the 2006 ESCO conference in Prague and appears as a key project on our Sustainable Cities website: www.ge.com/sustainablecities