When Will the Lights Go Out?
At the annual County Council meeting budget Green County Councillor Chris Coates proposed that a huge saving in costs and carbon emissions could be made by turning off selected street lighting between the hours of midnight and 5am.
Cllr Coates said “My first reaction to this idea was that there were serious implications for road safety and anti-social behaviour, but trials in other parts of the country don’t bear this out.”
Buckinghamshire, Hampshire and Essex County councils have already carried out trial ‘switch-offs’ and Buckinghamshire is to switch off 1,700 street lights in a scheme it believes could eventually save a hundred thousand pounds a year and reduce its carbon emissions by 590 tonnes. If this was repeated across Lancashire, which has 160,000 street lights and spends over £4million on street lighting energy bills, the potential savings are huge. Cllr Coates added “We are already upgrading street lights to be more energy efficient this simple measure could double the savings in cash and carbon.”