Czech Republic

Introduction | Highlights | Overview of activities | Documents | Contacts

Web site :http://www.svn.cz • http://www.uspornazarivka.cz/

The IFC/GEF Efficient Lighting Initiative (ELI) was launched in the Czech Republic during the year 2000 as a challenging project intending to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by increasing the penetration of energy efficient lighting. The budget for ELI-Czech Republic is $1,250,000.

The Czech lighting sector consumes approximately 10 percent of the national electricity production. While new office and public buildings are equipped with high-tech lighting systems, most of older buildings, such as schools, have inefficient lighting systems. Incandescent lamps were in late nineties still the most common source of light in households. It is evident, that there was a lot of opportunities to improve energy efficiency by changing people's lighting purchase habits and change the market.

Several methods have been used to market energy savings in the lighting sector in the Czech Republic. For households, a traditional TV and newspaper advertising campaign was launched (in two Phases), combined with public relations and cooperation with producers and sellers of ELI-certified CFLs. Cooperation was initiated with electricity distributors to help them improve the services they provide to their customers on the liberalized market. Reconstruction of street lighting systems is being promoted chiefly by conducting feasibility studies for municipal councils and by initiating contacts between them and suppliers of high quality lighting equipment. The activities of ESCos (Energy Services Companies) in the lighting sector constitute an effort to help create and expand the market for these services among their potential customers.

ELI Czech Republic Schedule

The implementation of the program was preceded by a program appraisal phase, which also formed the basis for planning the program activities. The actual launch of the activities was supported by a market assessment, the main goals of which were to draw up a detailed analysis of the market, identify the main barriers to implementation of efficient lighting technologies and, in particular, to design the program’s approaches to removing those barriers. Because ELI is a typical market transformation program, all the potential activities which will have a long-term effect on the penetration of technologies for energy efficient lighting needed to be identified.

In the Czech Republic, the ELI schedule has been as follows:

1999 – ELI program approved for the Czech Republic by the IFC and GEF Boards
2000 – May – Market Assessment started
2001 – Spring – ELI program launched actively with a set of activities
2003 – Fall – Expected termination of main ELI activities

The analysis performed during the program appraisal period and, in particular, the market assessment period showed that in Czech Republic there were many areas in which some kind of support or assistance could steer the market toward more energy efficient technologies. The areas of street lighting and internal lighting in the industrial, commercial and public sectors were pinpointed. For each of these sectors, a set of activities was developed whose main goal was to help remove the barriers to the use of energy efficient lighting technologies. In the different sectors these main barriers were as follows:

In households:

• Low awareness and poor information about energy efficient lighting among consumers
• Low priority of lighting in households
• Perceptions of the relatively high investment cost of Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs)

In the area of public external lighting:

• Low priority of street lighting for municipal decision makers
• Poor information about financial resources for public lighting retrofits
• Concerns of municipalities regarding long-term Energy Services Company (ESCo) contracts

In the sectors of commercial, industrial and public interior lighting:

• Low priority of lighting upgrades for decision makers
• Lack of financial resources for small projects
• Lack of information about energy efficient lighting technologies
  
• Inadequate transfer of experience about energy efficient lighting technologies from manufacturers through designers and installers to consumers
• High initial cost of some technologies (e.g., electronic ballasts)

A multi-pronged strategy was finally designed to approach all the above-mentioned sectors with goal to help overcome the existing barriers. For more information see - Overview of Activities

The examples of used advertisements in the ELI Residential Campaign:

Phase I of the residential campaign (2001/2002)

“Do you know, how much your incandescent eats?”

Phase II of the residential campaign (2002/2003)

“Energy Saving Bulb – it saves and lasts”