Royal Philips Electronics has been awarded a multi-year contract in partnership with French professional lighting company Step to light up the subway system in Paris with LED lighting solutions.

The switch to LED will reduce the energy needed to light up the Paris metro and suburban RER stations by more than 50%, while improving the light quality at the same time. The contract was awarded by Parisian transport company Groupe RATP for more than 85% of the lighting in metro and RER stations in the French capital.

The tender is to replace the 250,000 light points in RATP’s 302 metro stations and 66 RER stations with LED lighting.

RATP aims to reduce its energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 15% from 2004 until 2020.  Energy-saving LED lighting from Philips and Step helps meet those objectives. The amount of electricity that the RATP's stations currently consume represents roughly 12% of its total energy consumption.

With 12 million passengers travelling in and around Paris every day, RATP is the world's 5th largest urban transport operator. The multimodal network that it operates in the city center and suburbs, which is made up of 14 metro lines, two RER lines (A and B), three tram lines, 350 bus routes and direct links to two of the city's airports, is one of the biggest in the world.