Türkiye hopes to save millions of Turkish Liras and kilowatts of energy with an ambitious LED street light conversion project that has whet the appetite of sector players.

The project to replace Türkiye’s seven million street lights with LED-illuminated ones emerged last year with the remarks of Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız.

The project would be an important attempt to cure Türkiye’s distressing current deficit, which is majorly sourced by energy import dependency, by being more sustainable. In order to contribute further to this aim, the government has established the local production of LEDs as a condition.

Two companies have already applied pilot projects and the government is in talks with several foreign and local companies to figure out the terms of local production and reach a final decision. The government spends around 650 million liras annually on street lights and hopes to save up to 75 percent of energy used by switching to LEDs.

Governments – including, recently, European ones – have passed measures to improve the energy efficiency of light bulbs used in homes and businesses and banned the usage of incandescent light bulbs.

Türkiye follows the environmental regulations of the EU closely and is taking corresponding action.