As innovative as Unterschleißheim likes to be, the city is lagging behind when it comes to street lighting technology. On some corners there are still wooden light poles, many of the poles are 50 and more years old. And little has happened with the switch to energy-saving LED lights that has been publicized nationwide for years. “I would be happy if we were further along,” admitted Mayor Christoph Böck (SPD) in the city council’s environmental committee. After all, the committee then decided to quickly replace a large part of the lamps by 2023. Many pylons will also soon be replaced simply because it is necessary.
The fact that some things take time is shown by the fact that the SPD request to switch street lighting to energy-saving lights was made at the beginning of 2019. Some applications are still pending at City Hall. And in this case, a lot of preparatory work had to be done in order to make a decision. So it was necessary to clarify which lights are owned by Bayernwerk AG and which belong to the city. Not every lamp that is replaced is subsidized and some have been retrofitted because the old ones broke. The relevance for climate protection was also assessed. Of course, that turns out to be positive.
Nevertheless, the decision on how to deal with the 2414 lights was controversial. Stefan Diehl (CSU) questioned the changeover as a whole because the Bayernwerk representatives explained that at night between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. the lights should be dimmed by 50 percent in order to achieve the best possible savings. Diehl criticized this because it was important to increase the feeling of safety on the streets, especially in the late hours, and did not want to spend almost one million euros on it.
According to Bayernwerk, however, the light that is dimmed by 50 percent only makes a small difference in the effect. And as far as the costs are concerned, a lot remained open. First, the eligible lights owned by Bayernwerk are to be replaced by 2023. That is initially 1679 lights, with gross costs of 834,000 euros, with a 25 percent subsidy to be expected. The city will then save 79,000 euros in electricity costs per year. In this way, 130 tons of carbon dioxide are saved each year.