Companies Are Being Offered Efficient LED-Lighting Systems Worth up to £150,000

The company has raised£5m of venture capital to set up the scheme,which will not tie businesses into loans in the manner of the Green Deal energy efficiency scheme,but will instead see the firm recoup its costs by taking 80 per cent of the energy bill savings that result from the LED deployment.

"We have complete faith in the potential of LED solutions to deliver significant energy and monetary savings,"said Simon Leggett,managing director of Light Planet,in a statement.

"Our new finance initiative will encourage increased adoption of energy efficiency measures and hopefully provide a blueprint for other industries."

Companies such as Toyota and retailer New Look have installed LED lights,which are proven to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from lighting by between 50 and 85 per cent.

A study by electronics giant Philips published earlier this year found swapping conventional bulbs in street lights for LEDs could lead to energy savings of up to 85 per cent.It added that doubling global lighting efficiency would have a climate impact equivalent to eliminating half the emissions of all electricity and heat production in the European Union.

The new service from Light Planet is also part of a growing trend amongst clean tech firms to offer pay-as-you-save schemes,that allow companies to deploy energy saving technologies at no upfront cost and then pay for them through energy bill savings.

Earlier this month,solar installer Engensa launched a similar scheme for solar panels that offers businesses loans worth up to£1m to cover the cost of solar arrays,allowing them to then pay back the loan through energy bill savings and slar incentive payments.