Whatever happened to ‘switch off’ campaigns?

Some years ago, I chaired my employers ‘Green’ group. The idea was to reduce our carbon footprint and environmental impact. Our efforts met with mixed success.  My first suggestion of only offering company cars with lowest emissions went down like a cup of cold sick with colleagues. Next, allowing staff to spend a couple of (paid) days a year doing environmental work ended on the first day when a volunteer clearing up a local beauty spot ended up in A&E.

We did have one success though – a switch off campaign. We put an article in the staff magazine, appointed people to monitor compliance and I had the task of getting all our electricity bills together to measure the difference the campaign made. There was help from the energy savings rust and eventually the initiative met with some success.

But I never seem to see switch off campaigns any more. I looked at the energy saving trust’s website – the last switch off fortnight was in 2021 and I don’t see switch off ads any more. Possibly this is because of the astonishing success of LED lights in sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and burning it to produce an amazing blue light (presumably to prepare us for the arrival of the triffids).

Unfortunately, we now have the opposite problem – when you enter an office or go to the loo in a public building, lights are switched on automatically ,whether you want (or need) them or not. This is a major inconvenience for many (see the blog  incloosivity), discriminates against light sensitive people and is a massive waste of energy besides.

Surely our new energy supremo ‘big’ Ed Milliband should take action to turn this dumb logic on its head – common sense suggests lighting should only come on when people want it and switch it on (but have sensors to switch it  off if there is no one about). Besides saving energy this  might start to wean us off our addiction to lighting office buildings on sunny days.

But this should only be the beginning. Energy saving regulations could go much further.  For example, in France:

• Businesses, public buildings, and office spaces have to  to turn off their lights at night.. Lights must be switched off no later than 1 a.m.
• Shops must switch off window displays between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m.
• illuminated advertisements must be switched off between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m.

So what similar rules do we have in the UK? Er nothing, zilch, a big fat zero.

French cities and towns have also adopted local regulations to reduce street lighting during off-peak hours. In urban areas, streetlights are often dimmed or turned off during late-night and early-morning hours (councils have the discretion to decide which areas remain lit based on factors such as crime rates). In the UK, such measures would enable us to sleep more easily and allow children and astronomers to see the stars.

So come on Ed, let’s see your green credentials and adopt similar measures here. It’s a win – win – win situation. It won’t add to the financial black hole and may even save us all some money  (because of the way the electricity market works) and best of all it would help reduce discrimination against light sensitive people.

Lower bills, lower emissions, less discrimination  what’s not to like!

Bring back the switch off campaign and back it up with regulation!

By Dr John Lincoln
Blogs are written by LightAware supporters in a personal capacity

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