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She states that “if we are serious about the urgent need to
Cllr Crean points out that “there are approximately 15,600 public lighting units in the County of Wicklow which accounts for approximately 56.5% of the total energy consumption used by the Council. By shifting towards more sustainable public lighting, we
“Wexford County Council has already begun an ambitious programme of replacing lighting with LED bulbs. It is costing them in the region of €5 million, but the projected savings will be €800,000 per year over the estimated 15-year lifespan of the LED lighting. There is potential funding available for local authorities as part of the
LED At The End Of The Tunnel?
issued on Wednesday, July 31st…
tackle climate change at a local level, then we have to be willing to set ambitious and achievable targets. Thus, I am calling on Wicklow County Council to commit to developing a five-year lighting retrofit plan that could potentially half our energy output during that time.”
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4 comments
I appreciate your comments and agree switching to LED lighting needs to be responsive to public health concerns, which is the approach I would be advocating.
From my research, LED lighting can be adjusted to address the issues you raise (see point at the end from Green Party, Isle of Wight briefing). This can be done via designs such as filtered light, controlling the illuminated pattern or smart LED lights. The issue is therefore not LED lighting but the type and design that is used.
It appears Birmingham didn’t follow best practice to balance public health impact with environmental gains but we can learn from that rather than ignore such a significant energy saving measure. There will always be barriers found for most alternatives to current energy use, the reality is that we have to find solutions too.
The Green Party , Isle of White addressed the issues you have raised and summarised as follows in policy briefing regarding same ;
“Being ‘green’ is not just a question of energy savings. New ecologically responsible developments in LED include amber LED and filtered LED that removes blue light by eliminating wavelengths below 500 nanometers. These technologies, along with the use of fully shielded LPS, should be used in and around ecologically sensitive areas, optical astronomy facilities, and
in communities with a high degree of awareness and concern for the environment.” Full briefing at https://isleofwight.greenparty.org.uk/files/IsleOfWight/Street-lighting-are-we-in-the-dark.pdf
The Isle of White paper is interesting – thanks for this. There is another solution that as Igor mentioned, is successfully adopted in some counties in the UK and that is to switch lights off between certain hours overnight, or at least to have the facility to dim them right down. This has the advantages of facilitating healthy sleep, not disturbing wildlife, and reducing light pollution so that the night sky becomes available!
I believe that people’s worries that turning lights off for an extended period overnight might increase crime were not borne out. When the bright new LED lights were introduced in our suburb in Birmingham, there was a spike in night-time vandalism, with rubbish bins set on fire etc. (not by those who objected to the lights, I hasten to add!)
Anyway, good to have a thoughtful approach to this important issue of street lighting.
We had LED street lights imposed on our suburb of Birmingham UK. They caused immense problems. The lights acted like daylight, so they kept people awake at night. Some people had to get blackout blinds, which are not great if you want to open the window. Birds started chirping in the middle of the night!
In other words, LED lights make sleeping well difficult and disturbs both people and wildlife.
DO NOT ask for them!!
Tricia
We need to be a little careful here. When we lived in Birmingham they replaced the old lights with white/blue LED ones. These gave the impression of daylight and you could see al the colours of cars at night. Birds started singing in the middle of the night and people’s sleep was disturbed and some people had to put blackout curtains on their bedroom windows. The council , when asked, fitted baffles on some lamps to prevent houses being lit up as if they were in a football stadium. One solution is to turn the street lights off, say between 11 and 6. People, wrongly, claimed that this would increase crime but there is no evidence of that. Some County Councils in the UK do turn off the lights and save extra money that way.