The Paris Climate Conference is officially known as the 21st Conference of the Parties (or “COP”) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The COP meets each year to take decisions that further the implementation of the Convention and to combat climate change.
The 2015 Paris talks resulted in a new international climate change agreement signed by almost 200 nations to reduce carbon emissions. Also at COP21, Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) formally aunched the Global Lighting Challenge (GLC).
GLC is designed as a public-private partnership to generate ambitious commitments from national and subnational governments, big and small businesses, retailers, and others to meet the goal of deploy 10 billion high-efficiency, high-quality, and affordable lighting products (such as LED bulbs) as quickly as possible.
The GLC was announced by Sweden’s Minister of Energy Ibrahim Baylan, along with Ikea’s Chief Sustainability Officer Steve Howard and other CEM partners.
Initial commitments to the GLC include:
India: India has a goal to deploy 770 million LED bulbs and 35 million street lights using energy efficient LED bulbs in 3 years’ time.
China: China will work to achieve the domestic sales of over 5 billion LED bulbs over the next 2 years.
Ikea: Ikea’s goal is to sell over 500 million LED bulbs to IKEA customers over the next 5 years (through the end of 2020).
Additional commitments and supporting actions have been made by the governments of Australia, Germany, Mexico, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States as well as the State of Victoria in Australia. Commitments and supporting statements have also been collected from Cree, Philips, OSRAM, Enervee, and the DesignLights Consortium. The GLC will continue to seek additional commitments until the goal of 10 billion bulbs is achieved.
An update on progress will take place during the seventh Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM7), which will be hosted by the United States in June 2016.
