The Award Ceremony of ISA “Global SSL Award of Outstanding Achievement” (AOA) 2022 was held on Feb. 8, 2023

The award ceremony of International SSL Alliance (ISA) 2022 “Global SSL Award of Outstanding Achievement” (AOA) was held in the afternoon of February 8, 2023 at the opening ceremony of the 8th International Forum on Wide Bandgap Semiconductors and the 19th China International Forum on Solid State Lighting (IFWS & SSLCHINA 2022) at Jinji Lake Kempinski Hotel Suzhou, China.

Dr. Jianlin CAO, Deputy Director of the Committee of Education, Science, Culture, Health and Sports, The National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Former Vice Minister of Ministry of Science and Technology, China, President of ISA moderated the award ceremony.

He announced that, after the evaluation of the jury panel, the laureate of 2022 went to United Nations Environment Programme’s United for Efficiency (UNEP-U4E) reviewed by the ISA jury.

UNEP-U4E is a global effort supporting developing countries and emerging economies to move their markets to energy-efficient lighting, appliances and equipment. It was established in 2010 and originally focused on the transition to efficient lighting worldwide. As such, lighting remains a key component of the initiative and UNEP- U4E has developed a comprehensive range of guidance documents and tools for use by governments and other stakeholders in promoting the market transformation to energy-efficient lighting and encouraging their evolution to high-efficiency LED products.

Dr. Jianlin Cao introduced the reason for awarding, and mentioned that:

1. U4E mobilizes global resources and has a great impact on the global application of SSL. U4E provides countries, particularly developing and emerging economies, with the tools, guidance and targeted technical and policy support they need to sustainably transition to energy efficient products, enabling them to capture economies of scale and environmental benefits. It is mainly reflected in about five key areas, such as, the supportive policy; financial means support and purchasing power support; market monitoring, inspection and execution; environmental protection and sustainable development, etc.

2. In collaboration with governments and regional institutions, U4E has published a set of guidelines and tools for governments and other stakeholders to use in transforming the market for energy efficient lighting, appliances and equipment. Related capacity building activities have also been carried out, such as: general lighting and linear fluorescent lamp demonstration regulations guide, green public procurement energy-saving lighting technical guidance and specifications, product registration system, national energy-saving assessment, etc.

3. Implementing energy efficient lighting projects in 46 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. These projects are built around a comprehensive policy and approach guided by U4E. The projected energy savings from these projects by 2040 are conservatively estimated to save 12 TWh per year (or 60% of the predicted saving for developing/emerging economies by 2040), with associated CO2 savings of 13.6 million tonnes and a financial saving of USD 1.7 billion for consumers on their electricity bills. These savings are equivalent to avoiding the construction of more than five large (500 MW) powers stations.

The detailed outstanding achievements of U4E could be found at the ISA website: www.isa-world.org.

Mr. Patrick Blake, representative of UNEP’s United for Efficiency team, Programme Officer of U4E gave his acceptance speech in the recorded video.

He said it was so honored to accept the Global SSL Award of Outstanding Achievements from ISA on behalf of United for Efficiency team and partners. United for Efficiency first started working on energy efficient lighting in 2010 under the en.lighten initiative, a global initiative supporting more energy-efficient lighting to meet the climate goals. The transition to LED lighting was one of the fastest and cost-effective actions countries could take in making their commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement and also improved environment/health by removing mercury from lighting products. They focused on developing and emerging countries, where there was a large increase in the purchase of lighting and where there still remained a large amount of inefficient lighting products in the market. There was still work to be done, they estimated that developing and emerging countries could still save: 122 TWh of electricity consumption by 2030 with energy efficient lighting, which was equivalent to more than 55 power stations and reducing electricity bills by 16 billion USD per year.

He pointed that they had not completed this work alone. They worked closely with several partners from NGOs, governments, manufactures and academic institutions. They thanked them for their partnership throughout this journey. With input from several lighting experts, they had developed a range of tools, including:

·         Country Savings Assessments for 150+ countries showing the electricity, financial and energy security benefits of energy-efficient lighting and also other appliances.

·         Model Regulations as a template regulation, including general service lamps and linear lamps.

They worked throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America on National projects. These included setting MEPS, supporting local lighting test laboratories, communication campaigns and financial mechanisms to reduce the initial cost of LED lighting. Please see their website united4efficiency.org for a lot more information!

At last, he thanked all once again from the entire UNEP U4E team for this honor.

Dr. Jianlin Cao, on behalf of all participants, congratulated UNEP U4E team winning this award.

AOA award had been organized by ISA since 2013. This award aims to recognize the individuals and organizations that have made outstanding contributions and achievements in the fields of science and technology, standardization or policy formulation of SSL development on a regional or global scale.

It is the highest honor in the field of global SSL. Since the beginning of the selection, Professor Shuji Nakamura from University of California, USA, Nobel Laureate in Physics 2014, Academician Jiang Fengyi of China, Madam Wu Ling of China, inventors of LED Yellow Light, Red Light and OLED, Aixtron, prof. Harald Haas from University of Strathclyde, Signify, International Commission on Illumination (CIE), US Department of Energy, Emeritus Professor Warren Julian from Sydney University, Professor Martin David Dawson from UK, Professor Hongxing Jiang from America, ect. and totally 12 individuals, 4 companies, 2 international organizations and 1 government agency have been awarded this award.

The award of AOA accepts nominations for excellence around the world; does not charge any sponsorship fees; evaluated by worldwide authoritative experts; welcomes elites of the industry to sign up.

The AOA selection work will continue in the future, welcome colleagues in the global SSL industry to recommend candidates.