OTTAWA - The environmental showpiece of the G8 summit has lost some of its lustre.

World leaders will bask in the glow of only five solar-powered street lights instead of the planned 15 when they arrive in Ontario's cottage country later this month.

The solar lamps are the G8 summit's "signature environmental project." They were supposed to line the pathways of a resort near Huntsville, Ont., during the leaders' one-night stay.

But the lighting company says the tough terrain makes for slow going, and there isn't enough time left to get all 15 lights installed before the summit starts.

"There may be only five of them now used in different spots because of rocks," said Ove Bakmand, president of Net Electric Ltd.

"But they will be done in a couple of days. By the end of this week."

Summit organizers had high hopes for the solar lights.

"Leaving an environmental legacy is an important component of the 2010 G8 summit's environmental strategy," says a contract document.

"A well-chosen signature project at the Deerhurst Resort will help to showcase innovative Canadian technology, while leaving a positive lasting impression of the summit."

The G8 solar lights cost $207,900. The same money could buy almost 14,000 solar-powered Noma garden lights at Canadian Tire. Those lights cost $15 each.

But Bakmand said "this is nothing similar to that."

The government awarded the contract to Net Electric on May 25 -- a month before the start of the summit. The rush order didn't leave the company much time to do the job.

"It was basically unreasonable," Bakmand said.

The solar lights will be moved from the resort into the town after the summit as a gift to Huntsville.

"As the Muskoka 2010 G8 summit is being held at a privately owned resort, the signature environmental project will be installed at the Deerhurst Resort for use during the summit only and then gifted to the town of Huntsville for installation at a location within the town," the document says.

The Foreign Affairs Department, which a contract document lists as the buyer of the lights, referred questions to Infrastructure Canada, which in turn referred questions to the town of Huntsville.

Huntsville mayor Claude Doughty said he was surprised to hear about the scramble to get the solar lamps into the ground.

"I hadn't heard that, but it's not the first time I've heard that general comment about Huntsville," Doughty said.

"They're probably into some granite. We have a lot of it around here."

The solar lights weren't the town's idea. Doughty said the federal government gave the town a list of lamps to choose from.

"The genesis of the idea came from them," he said.

"They gave us several options of different models to look at to sort of determine what would work best for us after they were done."

The director general of the G8 and G20 summits, Sanjeev Chowdhury, acknowledged in a followup email that plans changed on the fly because of Deerhurst's tough turf.

"The rocky terrain was the reason why all 15 didn't go at Deerhurst," he said. "That's true."

Chowdhury said the remaining 10 lights will be installed in Huntsville in time for the summit.

The G20 summit in Toronto has its own special green project: a "living wall" of plants in the Direct Energy Centre.

The wall of "pre-cultivated" plants will have its own, built-in watering system. The project is meant to "contribute to the overall greening of the 2010 G20 summit" while leaving behind "an ongoing benefit to the local community."

The cost of the wall of plants hasn't been made public.