Why some French towns are switching off their street lights at night
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Loading... - Aabir Fathi
- 29 Mar 2022
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During France’s Covid lockdowns and curfews, certain communes decided to switch off their street lights at night, both to encourage people to observe restrictions on movement and also to save on money and energy.
Although Covid rules have now been almost completely lifted, some towns have decided to maintain this measure to help their local budget, and some had already switched their street lights off well before the pandemic.
In its latest report, France’s Agence de l’environnement et de la maîtrise de l’énergie (Ademe) environmental agency estimated that 41% of local authority electricity costs are linked to street lighting.
These bills increased by 25% in 2011 with the loi Nome (Nouvelle organisation du marché de l’électricité), which opened the supplier market up to competition.
Communes also saw their state energy funding cut by €11.5billion in 2014, requiring local councils to cut costs where possible.
“It was necessary to make savings somewhere, so we had to cut off our 7,800 street lamps the following year,” Dominique Fouchier, mayor of Tournefeuille (Haute-Garonne), told Franceinfo.
Spending will no doubt have increased recently as well amid the surging energy and fuel prices of the year so far.
Energy prices had already been creeping upwards between 2005 and 2017, rising from 7.7-15 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), according to Ademe figures. This alone pushed some communes to turn off their street lights even before the record energy rates seen this year.
“Since the decision we made in 2015 [to switch the lights off], the town is saving nearly €163,727 per year,” said Martine Berry-Sevennes, deputy mayor in charge of ecological transition in Colomiers (Haute-Garonne).
Protecting nighttime biodiversity
Light pollution from street lamps can affect humans’ circadian rhythm, but can also severely impact nocturnal wildlife.
Many insects, for example, are attracted to light, and so the presence of street lights disrupts their natural movements.
It can also disturb the migratory movements of birds, which normally locate themselves with the help of the stars overhead. Switching off street lights in a town can reduce the glow coming from that area, creating a corridor of darkness for the birds.
“We must relight the stars,” to protect biodiversity, Agnès Langevine, vice president in charge of climate change policies for the Occitanie region, told Franceinfo.
It is for this reason that Toulouse has decided to switch off lights surrounding the city’s monuments at 01:00 in the morning “to allow nocturnal life to take place.”
“The advantage of [light] pollution is that it is totally reversible,” said Ademe’s Bruno Lafitte. Turning off street lights has an immediate, positive impact on biodiversity. Read More...
