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The United Kingdom will grow darker this autumn with a newly passed initiative to turn off street lights of rural townships after midnight until 5am. One of the largest councils in the UK, the Essex Council, hopes to ‘reduce energy consumption by a third.’ Currently, across Essex, the council funds the energy for about 120,000 lights–equivalent to 44 million kilowatts of energy, producing 19,000 tons of carbon emissions.

Under the new plan, timing devices would be placed on the lights of rural townships and roads to turn off automatically at midnight. Bills will be reduced by about £1 million per year. From the article, “The pilot scheme will apply to rural areas well away from urban centres. The council plans to extend the project and new areas will be chosen in consultation with parish and district councils, residents and police. District councils that are chosen for the scheme but refuse to participate will foot their own lighting bills, and council tax payers face bearing the extra financial burden.”

Environmentalists (and sky-watchers alike) applaud the new plan but have also encouraged the various councils to adopt more efficient lighting through LED and CFL replacements. A campaigner for Friends of the Earth mentioned, “As long as it is well targeted at rural areas then it seems a good idea. If it was wrongly used in built-up areas it may create fear and you would get people taking the car instead of walking.” Hit the jump for more!
Link: Street Lights To Be Switched Off At Midnight To Save Energy