Overview of investment
Walloon Street Lighting is a public-private partnership (PPP) to modernise, finance and maintain public lighting installations on motorways and main roads in the French-speaking Walloon region of southern Belgium. The project covers 2,700km of roads, enough to travel from London to Latvia.
Public benefits:
- Safer streets
- Lowering emissions
- Reduced energy use
- Sector
- Street lighting (PPP)
- Investment date
- March 2019
- Fund
- DIF V
- DIF ownership stake
- 70%
400
166,000
384,000
3.5 million per annum
ESG impacts
Our cities are major contributors of greenhouse gas emissions, and municipal lighting accounts for nearly 5% of global CO2 emissions. Switching fixed city infrastructure such as streetlighting to energy efficient LEDs is therefore a significant part of finding climate solutions.
Our Walloon project, winner of a Green Solutions Awards in Belgium, includes the replacement of approximately 100,000 street lights, including some obsolete sodium lamps, with modern LEDs – helping save emissions equivalent to taking 11,000 vehicles off the road for one year.
Energy use
As part of the modernisation programme, Walloon Streetlighting has installed a remote monitoring and lighting management system, that dim and/or switch on/off individual or groups of lights when vehicles or animals are approaching. Together with the modernisation of the lighting equipment, the installations have also been futureproofed through the installation of IoT equipment. To provide the real-time monitoring of the performance of the equipment, and ancillary intelligence solutions such as traffic monitoring and detecting drivers entering the motorway in the wrong direction.
Safety
This smart technology has increased the control the region has over its power consumption, and reduced costs. The lights are also orientated towards the roads in a way aimed at leaving nocturnal biodiversity as unaffected as possible. Energy consumption on the Walloon Road network is forecast to reduce by nearly 76%, the equivalent to a reduction in CO2 emissions of 166,000 tons, over the lifespan of the project.
The project also includes measures to improve road safety and is increasing regional employment opportunities. It has created 400 new jobs and is providing 100,000 professional training hours alongside the regional employment agency.
“This award-winning project is driving Walloon towards a net zero future, improving safety and providing them with one of Europe’s first smart and connected motorways.”
Bastien Zehntner,
DIF Capital Partners, Associate Director, Origination, DIF
