In October 2020, Bolivia’s Ministry of Energies and Ministry of Environment and Water formally announced the start of activities on their Delivering the Transition to Energy Efficient Lighting project.  Working with the United Nations Environment Programme United for Efficiency (UNEP U4E) initiative, with financial support from the Global Environment Facility, the objective of the project is to accelerate the transition to energy-efficient lighting technologies in Bolivia through the development of a national efficient lighting policy and practical innovative interventions that will ensure success of the transition.

By the year 2030, on the basis of the its country saving assessment for Bolivia, U4E estimates that a transition to energy-efficient lighting will result in annual direct energy savings of 1.5 TWh, cost savings of over $160 million USD and a reduction of 1.1 million tonnes of CO2.

The project builds on the success of the previous National Energy Efficiency Program which, between mid-2008 to mid-2015, distributed around 7.5 million CFLs (18 W) to 1.5 million Bolivian households to replace inefficient incandescent bulbs, and awareness campaigns for the rational use of electricity, such as “Move your electricity consumption off-peak” and “If you turn the light off, you won’t pay for it.”

However, in the absence of mandatory energy labelling and standards and monitoring, verification, and enforcement mechanisms in Bolivia for lighting products at the time, the significant energy savings and peak load demand reductions achieved by these activities where not accompanied by a sustained transition to more efficient lighting products.

This new, three-year, $13.5 million USD project will therefore address these barriers through:

• Development of national policy and regulations to promote the rapid transition to efficient lighting
• Creation of monitoring, verification and enforcement (MVE) capacities to ensure effective transition to efficient lighting
• Ensuring environmentally sound management for a sustainable transition to efficient lighting
• Lighting innovation to accelerate the use of efficient lighting, in particular light emitting diodes (LEDs) and controls

Fundamental to the success of the project will be the development of a National Efficient Lighting Strategy employing an integrated policy approach to phasing out inefficient lamps. This approach ensures that the key elements necessary to accelerate adoption of energy-efficient lighting –standards and regulations, supporting policies, monitoring, verification and enforcement, finance and financial delivery mechanisms and environmentally sound management and health– are all taken into account, along with the priorities and perspectives of key stakeholders, when implementing the project.

Technical training and support to government authorities, customs administrations and national laboratories will support the strategy by extending in country monitoring, verification and enforcement and testing capacities.

Bolivia’s existing standards for energy-efficient lighting already specify a voluntary efficiency label which allows for lamp efficiency reporting with test parameters and values. This gives Bolivia a firm basis for developing and establishing minimum energy performance standard (MEPS) as a regulatory tool to increase the average energy performance of lighting products. This will be supported by national legislation to provide the authority to enforce these MEPS and a regulatory environment and legal framework to ensure environmentally sound life-cycle management of lamps. In the longer term, the intention is to use demonstration and procurement programmes to build consensus with consumers and decision makers in government and private sector on the increased use of solid-state lighting and lighting controls in the domestic and commercial/industrial sectors and to make municipal governments aware of the benefits of advanced lighting systems through demonstration programmes of locally appropriate street lighting LEDs and controls. This will lead ultimately to the development of more stringent MEPS.

The project also seeks to support the Government of Bolivia to enact a national plan to collect, recycle and/or responsibly dispose of spent lighting products that may contain valuable and/or hazardous materials.  This will include waste management systems for spent lamps, including the design of a collection and recycling service organization (CRSO), and international coordination for the environmentally sound export/import of lamp waste, along with awareness raising and communication campaigns to promote collection and recycling of spent lamps.

For further information on the project, contact Roberto Borjabad at roberto.borjabad@un.org.