In the biggest ever promotion of its kind, The Sun are leading a national campaign to install millions of energy saving light bulbs and reduce Britain’s CO2 emissions by over 350,000 tonnes.

The Great British Light Switch is unprecedented in its scale and speed: on Saturday January 19th, 4.5 million energy saving lights will be given out free with The Sun, via more than 17,000 stores the length and breadth of Britain.

It is the single largest order of energy saving lights and the largest ever one day energy saving initiative of its kind.

The Sun has backed the Great British Light Switch campaign to make it easy for people to switch to energy saving lights and is adding its distribution and promotional reach to help kick-start wider uptake of action to tackle climate change.

Rebekah Wade, Editor of The Sun said, “We are committed to addressing our impact on climate change and lowering our energy use. The aim of the paper, and its News International sister titles is to become carbon neutral by 2010, and we hope in backing The Great British Light Switch campaign we will help millions of people to become more energy-efficient and reduce CO2 emissions.”
 
The Great British Light Switch campaign was organised with the help of Cool nrg, whose business is to cut significantly worldwide CO2 emissions by delivering fast, large-scale energy efficiency campaigns.

“The real significance of the campaign in showing how to tackle climate change is not fact that millions of lights were distributed in such a short time, but that The Sun Newspaper and Southern Electric recognised the need to act on a scale and speed never done before and were willing to take the risk to do so.  This is an example about how governments and countries around the world can swiftly act to reduce their CO2,” said Nic Frances, CEO, Cool nrg.

Energy saving lights use approximately one fifth of the electricity of a standard light bulb , but produces the same amount of light. Using less electricity means that our homes produce less CO2: one of the main causes of climate change.

Changing all the lights in people’s homes would cut Britain’s total CO2 emissions by 3.86 million tonnes per year and save Britons £1.1 billion on their energy bills. The electrical saving is equivalent to the output of 4 power stations. To date only 10 per cent domestic lights use energy saving bulbs.