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The Tianjin Economic Development Area (TEDA) in China has become the first city area in China to join the LED City program, an international community of government and industry parties initiated by LED maker Cree Inc of Durham, NC, USA to evaluate, deploy and promote LED lighting for municipal infrastructure.

Tianjin is the fifth city to join the program following Raleigh, NC (last February), Toronto, Canada (July), Ann Arbor, MI (October) and Austin, TX this January. About 137km southeast of Beijing, Tianjin is China's third largest city (with a population of 9.5 million), a major commercial and industrial center, and the biggest port in north China. Tianjin is also known for its street-scapes of colonial-era buildings (a remnant of its status as a Treaty Port after 1858). The new satellite city of TEDA is now a center for multinational businesses and has an extensive modern infrastructure.

Over the past two years, TEDA partnered with Tianjin Polytechnic University in a large, student-produced LED street-lighting project. Twenty graduate students, directed by Pingjuan Niu (professor at the solid-state lighting R&D center), designed, produced and installed about 1500 LED street-lighting fixtures more than a year ago to illuminate 15km of the university’s streets.

“LED lighting not only reduces significantly the amount of energy we use for illumination, it also does not contain toxic materials such as mercury or lead,” says TEDA’s vice chairman Ai Yaming. “In addition to the energy and cost benefits, TEDA and the Tianjin Polytechnic University support the development and manufacturing of high-quality LED fixtures in our region.”

“Our university, its students and TEDA are developing expertise in making the best quality LED lighting with the intent to help accelerate the adoption of LED lighting in China and to increase the economic opportunity for our region,” says Niu.

“The LED street-lighting project at Tianjin Polytechnic University is impressive in scale and in the level of quality achieved by Dr Niu and her students,” says Cree’s VP of marketing, Chris James. “We encourage other Chinese cities and universities to join with these innovators to help us work to significantly reduce the amount of energy used for lighting throughout the world and to accelerate the adoption of this new technology through innovative design and manufacturing here in China.”

See related items:

Austin joins LED City program

Ann Arbor joins LED City initiative

Toronto joins LED City initiative

Cree and Raleigh launch ‘LED City’ municipal lighting initiative

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