How many streetlights are there?
How many streetlights are there?
roughly 350 million worldwide
Street lighting accounts for roughly 3% of world electricity consumption. Converting the global stock to LED would save more power than several large countries use in total.
There are on the order of 350 million street lights worldwide, and unusually for a number this size it rests on real inventories rather than sampling. Street lighting typically consumes 20 to 40% of a municipality's electricity bill, which is why the global conversion to LED has moved fast: LEDs cut consumption by 50 to 70% and last four times as long. The change has a visible side effect — LED street lighting is blue-rich, which raises measured skyglow even as energy use falls.
How the figure is arrived at
Street lights are usually unmetered: the utility bills the council for an inventory of lamps at an assumed burn time rather than for measured consumption. That billing arrangement forces both parties to maintain an accurate count of every lamp and its wattage, which is the only reason a number exists at all.
How confident it is
- Low estimate
- 300,000,000
- High estimate
- 400,000,000
- Spread
- 1.3× between the bounds
Other things people built counts
- How many countries are there in the world? 195 — or 193, or 206, or 249, depending on who is counting
- How many cars are there in the world? about 1.5 billion motor vehicles
- How many planes are in the air right now? roughly 10,000 to 20,000 at any moment
- How many languages are there in the world? about 7,150 living languages
- How many McDonald's are there? about 43,000 in over 100 countries
- How many phones are there in the world? about 8.9 billion mobile connections — more than there are people
- How many nuclear weapons are there? about 12,200 warheads
- How many websites are there? about 1.1 billion hostnames — but only around 200 million active
- How many books have ever been published? about 130 million as of 2010 — probably over 200 million now
- How many airports are there in the world? about 45,000 with runways — but only around 4,000 with scheduled airline service
- How many ATMs are there in the world? about 3 million
- How many cities are there in the world? about 10,000 with over 50,000 people; 33 megacities over 10 million
- How many buildings are there in the world? somewhere between 1.5 and 4 billion
- How many computers are there in the world? roughly 2 billion personal computers in use
Common questions
- How many streetlights are there?
- roughly 350 million worldwide
- How is that estimated?
- Street lights are usually unmetered: the utility bills the council for an inventory of lamps at an assumed burn time rather than for measured consumption. That billing arrangement forces both parties to maintain an accurate count of every lamp and its wattage, which is the only reason a number exists at all.
Related pages
- How many countries are there in the world? 195 — or 193, or 206, or 249, depending on who is counting
- How many cars are there in the world? about 1.5 billion motor vehicles
- How many planes are in the air right now? roughly 10,000 to 20,000 at any moment
- How many languages are there in the world? about 7,150 living languages
- How many McDonald's are there? about 43,000 in over 100 countries
- How many phones are there in the world? about 8.9 billion mobile connections — more than there are people
- How many nuclear weapons are there? about 12,200 warheads
- How many websites are there? about 1.1 billion hostnames — but only around 200 million active
- How many people are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many stars are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many bones are in the human body? The human body
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? Living things and the natural world
- How many ants are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many trees are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
Sources
- Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place