LED Lighting Expected to Be Included in National Subsidy Promotion

　　The reporter recently learned from relevant departments that, after 4 years of national financial subsidy promotion for high-efficiency lighting products, LED lighting is expected to be included in financial subsidy promotion.

　　In this regard, the relevant person in charge of Guangdong Snowlight (8.45,-0.02,-0.24%) Lighting stated that Snowlight began R&D and technological innovation of LED lighting products many years ago, and has cooperated with advanced technologies from abroad and Taiwan, striving to improve the level of epitaxial chip packaging technology.

　　As one of the world's two largest LED chip manufacturers, Osram has superior innate conditions in the LED lighting field. Speaking of LED lighting subsidy promotion, the relevant person in charge at Osram stated that LED lighting promotion must break through the price bottleneck, and financial subsidies will be an effective incentive method.

　　In fact, as early as the end of 2007, the Ministry of Finance and the National Development and Reform Commission jointly issued the "Interim Measures for the Management of Financial Subsidy Funds for the Promotion of High-Efficiency Lighting Products", which stated that the high-efficiency lighting products eligible for financial subsidies mainly include self-ballasted fluorescent lamps for general lighting, tri-phosphor double-ended straight-tube fluorescent lamps (T8 and T5 types), metal halide lamps, high-pressure sodium lamps and other electric light source products, semiconductor (LED) lighting products, as well as necessary supporting ballasts.

　　Since LED lighting products fall within the scope of high-efficiency lighting product promotion, whether LED lighting products can be incorporated into the promotional scope has always been a topic of great concern to all sectors of society in the annual national financial subsidy promotion of high-efficiency lighting products. However, because the relevant standards system for LED lighting products has not yet been established, and China's core LED technologies remain relatively scarce, LED lighting products still hover outside the subsidy promotion.

　　However, the country's work to promote the development of the LED lighting industry was launched long ago. In order to effectively guide the healthy and rapid development of China's semiconductor lighting applications, expand the scale of the semiconductor lighting market, promote the improvement of core technology R&D and innovation capabilities in the industry, and rapidly enhance the overall competitiveness of China's semiconductor lighting industry, as early as the beginning of 2009, the country launched LED lighting application demonstration work, introducing the "Ten Cities, Ten Thousand Lamps" semiconductor lighting application demonstration city plan. Initially, the plan covered 21 domestically developed cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Wuhan. In May this year, the Ministry of Science and Technology announced a second batch of 16 newly added "Ten Cities, Ten Thousand Lamps" demonstration cities, including important cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou.

　　It is understood that the current market share of LED lighting products is relatively low, with most being applied in street lamp and landscape lighting projects. Although LED lighting products have shown a relatively rapid growth momentum in China over the past two years, due to the impact of high prices, they still find it difficult to become mainstream in the lighting market.