Washington, DC is set to follow in the footsteps of cities all who have – or else are currently in the process of switching to LED lighting. However, unlike the other cities, Washington will not be paying the high costs of making this switchover – it is taking advantage of Philips Lighting's first foray into offering a “lighting as a service” model. While the model is mostly used to finance building retrofits, it hasn’t been used for the purpose of lighting. Philips have agreed that they pay the upfront costs of installation and will later be compensated through a performance contract i.e. the energy savings the retrofit produces.

Philips will upgrade more than 13,000 lighting fixtures in Washington, DC, with no cost upfront for the city along with a 10 year maintenance contract. The project is to start this spring and will take a year to fully complete, and from the $2 million that the LEDs are expected to save each year, Philips will get paid. The bulbs software will alert Philips of any repairs that are needed as well as the bulbs automatically adjusting light output based on the amount of natural light that’s available..

CEO of Philips Lighting Americas, Bruno Biasiotta says, “With digital lighting systems, we really need to break with conventional thinking and look to the services and delivery models of the software industry to understand the future of lighting and how we can remove one of the greatest barriers to adoption: the upfront costs.”

A recent survey of 300 mayors released this week showed that switching to LEDs is a high priority (82%), second only to public building retrofits (86%). LEDs along with any other energy-efficient lighting are considered the "most promising technologies" for reducing carbon emissions and energy use. Currently about a third of cities have a comprehensive energy plan, while a third more say they will have one within 2 years.

At the US Conference of Mayors meeting in June last year, they adopted a policy that affirmed the benefits and importance of advanced lighting systems in cities. New York City is converting all 250,000 streetlights to LEDs, with Boston and Los Angeles just recently finished their own city-wide lighting retrofits. It's estimated that the 35 million streetlights in the US consume about 1% of all electricity - and they are often the single biggest energy cost for cities.