First Step Taken to reduce Street Lighting costs

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Council unanimously supported my call for the preparation of a report costing out the benefits of changing street lights to LED bulbs.

The City of Sydney Council have adopted a plan to reduce the Cities carbon footprint and LED lighting has been part of the strategy. They conducted a lighting trial to collect data and to test effectiveness.

Street lightening is considered one of the easy targets in the campaign to reduce our carbon footprint but can be costly and of course is controlled by the energy supplier. Rate payers pick up the enormous tab for lightening our streets and intersections and finding the balance between lighting for safety reasons and unnecessary waste can be tricky- even the timing of when lighting comes on and of.

I hope that the report back to Council shows that with an investment in LED lighting that we can not only reduce the amount of carbon we are dumping into the atmosphere, but also save money in the long term as electricity prices rise.

I expect that it will be quite costly to convert the lighting to LED but if so I would be very supportive of Council raising a loan to pay for such change as it will pay itself of over time through electricity savings.

Council has also made a commitment to have a sustainability fund were funds that are saved through reduced consumption of electricity can be banked and then used to purchase products that contribute to the saving.

So sustainable issue keep moving forward and the Waste and Sustainable Fund gives an income stream back to Council that tackles these big issues.

Looking forward to reading the report in the new year.

Lights are on, but nobody is home: Wasted energy at Milton Public School.

So what is it with these images?

They were all taken at 5am this morning at Milton Public School (2 Jan 2010) the lights have all been on since 4am and will remain on until about 6am. This happens every single day of the year, regardless of holidays or not. The light pollution is insane and all species of residents who have happily lived beside Milton Public School for years are affected by these lights shining into their homes at the wrong time of day.

( the lights used to come on in the middle of the night, but that at least has been sorted out)

But apart from the light pollution that has upset the residents, what a poor message this sends to the community on the issues of power saving and sustainability. It also highlights how different schools can be, when the primary school not 10kls away, does eveyhthing within its power to reduce reuse and conserve. That school also has a solar power array and would never tolerate the waste demonstrated in these photos. I'm glad its not my personal power bill- but then again it is, for every one of us PAY in greenhouse pollution increases and that effect on climate change and as tax payers of NSW. This year I hope will be the last year that we see this sort of energy waste at Milton Public School- one year is long enough to fix the problems and get it right!