Raytec has launched a campaign to raise awareness of the issue, which could potentially cut thousands of pounds from individual electricity bills and across the whole country make a significant contribution to reducing CO2 emissions.

A number of organisations have already joined the campaign and installers, specifiers and end-users are being urged to add their support.

In a letter to Environment Minister Hilary Benn, Raytec's MD Sean Cutler welcomed the Government's support for low-energy lighting in the home and called for the same approach to be taken with commercial security lighting.

"The latest, low-energy security lights deliver equal illumination to the widely used halogen-type products but for a fraction of the energy consumption," says Shaun Cutler.

"We call on the Government to highlight this issue and to do everything possible to encourage local authorities, government departments, and commercial users, to give priority to energy-efficiency when installing new security lights and illuminators."

National CCTV installer Clear Image is among companies supporting the campaign.

"At the moment people don't realise just how much money and energy they are wasting with traditional security floodlighting," says MD Neil Smith "For example, we've just done a cost/benefit study for one client - a high security cash handling company - and showed that they will save GBP 70,000 over three years. There are very significant savings to be made. Even though the capital cost of energy-efficient systems is higher this is quickly outweighed by reduced maintenance and power consumption"

The only obstacle to the uptake of greener lighting solutions is awareness, adds Sean Cutler.

"Technically Raytec's new generation LED-based security illuminators give equivalent or better performance than old-style mains-driven products, both in Infra-Red and White Light. There is no good operational reason for wasting energy on security lighting"

Raytec says it is adding a new link to its website home page to allow security system designers and users to add their support to the campaign.