While I was driving back home along the M25 I noticed how many street lights ran along the hard shoulder and slip roads from joining junctions. The power alone from my little Fiat Punto’s headlights did me fine while driving along the unlit country roads of Sussex, so why is it necessary to have just so many street lights on a heavily used highway?
I haven’t seen in the press, media or on blogs the suggestion that one way we could save energy would be to reduce the amount of street lighting that we have on our roads; apart from the annual global incentive of “Earth Hour”. While I understand that street lighting is relied upon for security and safety and is a useful crime deterrent in some areas, I am sure that there is an abundance of un-necessary street lighting. After a little research i.e putting “turn street lights off, save energy” into Google I found an interview with Ed Milliband where the question had been put to him:
Why don’t we turn off every other streetlight from midnight to five in the morning? (Robert Megicks)
Where by his answer had been:
No one has ever suggested that to me. Let me look into how the energy is generated.
I am guessing this was from November last year, as the interview wasn’t dated.
Digging a little deeper I discovered a whole wealth of examples of councils around England dipping there toes into the waters of “turning off street lights” to reduce carbon emissions. Essex, Poole and East Sussex have attempted or are attempting schemes, either by dimming lights or turning off street lights in predominantly rural areas or areas with low levels of crime. Public reaction seems to be split, although someone did mention that with less street lighting anti-social behaviour had been reduced as dark streets seemed to deter kids from “hanging-out” although how far that this is true I can not say.
However, figures show that this can be an effective way to reduce energy use.
In Essex where the scheme to turn lights off at midnight has been piloted, there are approximately 120,000 council funded lights producing an annual energy consumption of 44 million kilowatt hours of electricity and 19,000 tonnes of carbon emissions. (source: The Independent)
Results have yet to be published, however if boroughs around the country followed suit, either by turning lights off, dimming them or even have one light on for every three in the most suitable areas, then this would surely be progress.
And those who argue that this will encourage crime and anti-social behaviour, will be pleased to realise the cost-effective benefit, in the USA, Santa Rosa, California are removing 6,000 of their 15,000 street lights, which they believe will save $400,000 each year. This money could then be used to invest in anti-crime methods such as more police and youth projects.
Meanwhile, Sir John Madejski of Auto-Trader and Reading football club fame has become the main backer of Clearview which own ‘Solar Lite’ road studs. These studs incorporate a solar energy cell instead of a reflecting light, which is used in the humble cat’s eye. They are charged via the sun during the day and release light during the night; 2 hours of daylight store enough power to run for 10 nights, although needless to say this would work better in sunnier climates than our own.
However, according to a report published by The Cochrane Study advises that removing street lighting would be potentially adverse considering “that street lighting reduced the number of fatal [car] crashes by 77 per cent and other collisions by between 32 and 55 per cent.” (Source: the telegraph), this technology could support those councils wishing to trial these changes.
Some councils have switched off some of their street lighting and started to install these new road studs on roads that are little used late at night. They also help the driver navigate the road better as the lights can be seen up to 1km away and can map out the roads path and bends ahead. The company has just secured their first motorway contract, where 5,000 studs will be installed at Clacket lane on the M25. Bucks council has also endorsed these studs whereby they saved 500 tonnes of Co2 in the past 12 months. (Source: the times online )
However, one German scheme seems perhaps like a step too far, where an almost pay-per light system accessed via your mobile phone means residents must use their cell phone to call the energy provider and key in a pin-code for the lights to be switched on at a rate of 3euros per hour!
The company Telensa has designed a chip that can be installed in street lamps that connects to a central computer on a wireless connection. Via the Internet thousands of lights can be controlled to reflect local conditions better than can be done with the traditional method of timers. Telensa say that this could slash energy use by 40%.
Which ever method is used, either dimming lights, turning them off between certain hours, or using the technology as mentioned above, I think would be warmly welcomed, and I for one would love to be able to see the stars more clearly at night!
