COP26 look-back: Signify CEO urges doubling pace of building renovations
By Mark Halper
At the COP26 global climate conference earlier this month in Glasgow, Signify CEO Eric Rondolat took the opportunity to remind the world that Internet-connected LED lighting can help slash carbon emissions.
While general awareness of LED energy efficiency has been long established, what was notable about Rondolat’s message was the emphasis on connected lighting — which enhances efficiency gains by adding the intelligence of smart controls and usage analysis.
In a broad general scenario, Signify estimated that a switchover to connected LED lighting in the professional market could reduce CO2 emissions equivalent to the amount that 25 billion trees can absorb in a year. The electricity savings would be equivalent to the annual consumption of 494 million households, the company said.
“Interventions like the switch to renewable energy take time to yield results,” Rondolat said. “Adopting energy-saving technologies can instantly relieve many of the urgent energy challenges the world is facing in electricity and fuel shortages and price hikes. We can act today by accelerating the switch to energy-efficient lighting, by doubling the rate of building renovations per year, and by mobilizing consumers to make their own significant impact in the Race to Zero.”
The Race to Zero is a United Nations campaign to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2050 at the latest. COP26 is the popular name for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference; it is the 26th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held first in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
Rondolat’s call for accelerating the switch, and for picking up the pace of building renovation, perhaps belies what the Signify boss has in the past described as a long education process in convincing the market of the benefits of connected lighting. Uptake by commercial users has been slower than the industry — not just Signify — had hoped for, although earlier this week Rondolat expressed confidence that users are now tuned in.
Still, the rate of conversion has been sluggish. Last August, Rondolat criticized what he called the “glacial pace” of the move away from conventional lighting in the commercial market. Earlier this week, Swedish LED lighting company Fagerhult Group’s CEO Bodil Sonesson noted that “the share of installed LED lighting is only about 30% in Europe.”
Speaking during her company’s third-quarter financial presentation, she added that “connectivity gives an additional 70% efficiency.”
Read the full article at LEDs Magazine.
Contributing Editor to Endeavor Business Media's LEDs Magazine, MARK HALPER is a freelance business, technology, and science journalist who covers everything from media moguls to subatomic particles. Halper has written from locations around the world for TIME Magazine, Fortune, Forbes, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Guardian, CBS, Wired, and many others. A US citizen living in Britain, he cut his journalism teeth cutting and pasting copy for an English-language daily newspaper in Mexico City. Halper has a BA in history from Cornell University.
