The end of discharge lamps: what local authorities must replace
At a time of budget trade-offs, the question is no longer whether the sodium installation should move to LED, but in what order. The end of discharge lamps imposes a timetable that the municipality does not choose.
5 min readUpdated on August 31, 2026
End of October, finance committee. A deputy mayor presents next year's capital budget and stumbles on one line: the public lighting installation, several hundred light points, most of them high-pressure sodium. The technical department reports that replacement lamps are becoming hard to find. For local authorities, the end of discharge lamps has stopped being a subject to keep an eye on.
The timetable is not a matter for local decision. It stems from two European texts already in force, which are gradually withdrawing discharge sources from the market. The only open question concerns the order of replacement.
End of discharge lamps: what the regulations require of local authorities
Two texts act in parallel. The European ecodesign regulation for light sources sets a minimum efficacy threshold in lumens per watt, below which a source can no longer be placed on the EU market. Most discharge technologies fall below this threshold.
The RoHS directive, for its part, restricts hazardous substances in electrical equipment, including mercury. Fluorescent, sodium and metal halide lamps contain it and benefited from exemptions. It is the gradual expiry of these exemptions that is accelerating the withdrawals.
The point to remember fits in one sentence: the ban concerns placing new lamps on the market, not the use of lamps already installed. A lantern in service can continue to operate. It simply can no longer be repaired like for like.
The families concerned and their timetable
| Family of sources | Text concerned | Status |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Mercury vapour | Ecodesign | Withdrawn from the market since 2015 |
| Compact fluorescent lamps without integrated ballast | RoHS | Withdrawal under way since February 2023 |
| T5 and T8 linear fluorescent tubes | RoHS | No longer placed on the market since August 2023 |
| High-pressure sodium and metal halide | RoHS, high-intensity exemptions | Deadlines expected from February 2027 |
The detail of the texts, dates and regulatory references is in our analysis of the European directive on the end of discharge lamps.
Municipal sports facilities are in the front line. Many sports halls, stadiums and outdoor multi-sport areas are still equipped with metal halide floodlights, whose sources are becoming difficult to obtain.
A risk that is above all operational
No municipality will be penalised because a sodium street light is still working. The risk lies elsewhere: the day the lamp burns out, the store no longer has the reference, and the light point stays dark.
This situation is very poorly managed case by case. Replacing an isolated lantern with an LED model means reworking the bracket, sometimes the column, and produces an installation that is inconsistent in shade as well as in illuminance level.
Anticipating costs less than putting up with it. A multi-year plan makes it possible to group orders, deal with entire streets and keep a consistent installation.
What to replace them with, street by street
Replacement does not consist of screwing an LED source into a lantern designed for sodium. The geometry of the reflector, the heat dissipation and the sealing are not designed for it, and the photometric result is rarely compliant.
Renovation is done by complete luminaire, with three decisions to be made: the illuminance level and road class according to the EN 13201 standard, the colour temperature, and the night-time dimming strategy.
The survey method, the division into phases and the prioritisation are developed in our guide to LED public lighting renovation for municipalities.
What can still be funded
The landscape of Energy Savings Certificates (CEE) has been considerably narrowed. The order of 23 February 2026 abolished the BAR-EQ-110, BAT-EQ-127 and IND-BA-116 sheets. Indoor lighting operations, commercial as well as industrial, no longer have a dedicated standard sheet.
The RES-EC-104 sheet, relating to the renovation of outdoor lighting, remains. It is now the only CEE lever directly usable on a municipal public lighting installation, subject to meeting the conditions of the sheet in force.
The other levers remain budgetary and territorial: energy syndicate, investment grants, regional programmes. The funding package is prepared ahead of the costing, not afterwards.
What replacement changes in operation
The first effect is consumption. For the same illuminance level, an LED road luminaire draws much less power than a sodium lantern with its ballast, which reduces the energy bill and the subscribed power item.
The second effect is maintenance. A discharge lantern required scheduled periodic relamping. An LED luminaire is replaced by optical unit or by driver, when a fault is found, which shifts the workload from systematic maintenance to condition-based maintenance.
The third effect is flexibility. Dimming and middle-of-the-night reduction become possible street by street, which makes it possible to adjust the level to actual use without switching the lighting off. These gains are costed in the funding application.
The mistakes to avoid when moving to LED
The first is oversizing. Replacing a 150-watt sodium lantern with an LED luminaire of equivalent flux often leads to over-lighting, because the efficiency of the optic has changed. The calculation is redone from the road class, not from the old wattage.
The second is colour temperature. A white that is too cool is poorly received in residential areas and raises an environmental question. The French order of 27 December 2018 on the prevention of light pollution regulates this characteristic in particular, as well as switch-off times.
The third is inconsistency. An installation renovated piecemeal, with different shades and levels from one street to the next, gives an impression of disorder and complicates the stock of parts. Consistency is decided at the outset, in a municipal technical reference document.
What to do before the budget vote
Three deliverables are enough to turn an intention into a defensible budget line.
- An inventory of the installation by type of source, with the age of the columns and the condition of the foundations.
- An illuminance survey on the main roads, to objectively measure the gaps against the road class.
- A phasing in annual tranches, costed, with the estimated consumption avoided per tranche.
The first of these deliverables is produced on site. Our partner carries out this lighting audit of the municipal installation, and also details what can still be funded through CEE.
To prepare the first tranche, browse the outdoor and road lighting range and send the inventory of your installation.
Further reading: Renovating public lighting: what a municipality must check and Solar public lighting: operation, autonomy and use cases for local authorities. Reference: Directive 2011/65/EU, known as RoHS (EUR-Lex).
In the Rexylum catalogue: the Roads and traffic routes range and CO-L500 150W. To size the installation: the photometric study by Luminance Consulting.
