Outdoor Lighting and Crime - Amper

in the design or as installed. This helps to restrict the light to where it is needed.
Comprehensive outdoor lighting laws incorporating this and other commonsense principles
can enhance the economy, improve quality of life through reduced glare and assist the
meeting of greenhouse gas emission targets. The greenhouse problem imposes a further
constraint, however, in that outdoor lighting cannot be maintained even at its existing levels in
developed countries while developing countries see these levels as desirable goals and expect
or demand to be allowed the same. 88
Not only the proportion of waste but the total energy usage for outdoor lighting in the
developed world will probably need to be reduced greatly in future. The Leadership in
Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program of the US Green Building Council
(USGBC 2002) has already made a modest but important start on this problem by specifying
low maximum illuminances. The values used are the minima set in the RP-33-1999 standard
of the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA 1999, IDA IS152 1999).
It is important to know in advance what potential impacts such lighting reductions might have
on crime, traffic safety, mobility safety and commerce in case the outcome can be optimised,
say by prioritising outdoor lighting usage by function (eg road/pathway, sports, signs,
decorative) and by tradeoffs with other energy usage (eg commercial and domestic heating
and air conditioning). Although this document is concerned primarily with the crime aspect,
awareness of these other issues helps in proposing effective solutions.
6.2 ENERGY CONSERVATION ASPECTS
6.2.1 Greenhouse gas emissions
Greenhouse gas emissions in Australia do not appear to be under control. For example, in the
state of Victoria the increase in electrical energy generated in 2000 was about 33% more than
in 1990. About three quarters of Victorians live in Melbourne, the state capital, so the
statement is also more-or-less applicable to Melbourne. Much of this energy is generated by
power stations burning brown coal, a prolific source of greenhouse gases, and most of the
remainder comes from other fossil-fuelled processes. Only a few percent comes from
hydroelectric generation and wind farms. On the basis of exponential growth, the likely
increase in greenhouse gas emissions from all electricity generation is about 8 times greater
than the 8% maximum permissible growth by 2008 in greenhouse gas emissions over the
1990 value, the generous international obligation sought by and accepted by Australia but not
88 Existing poorly shielded and semi-cutoff street lighting is a major source of light pollution,
especially at large distances from the light sources. Much of the upwardly emitted waste light
is near the horizontal, where its long light path through the lower atmosphere produces about
three times as much skyglow as the same amount of light would do when emitted at high
angles. Full-cutoff shielding is a simple and efficient solution, already adopted in some US
states and elsewhere to the extent that full-cutoff (flat lens) ‘cobra head’ streetlights now
outnumber the semi-cutoff type in the production data from the major US manufacturer (Di
Sora 2000, Fleming 2002). Unfortunately, some of the obsolete unshielded and semi-cutoff
street lighting fixtures removed in the upgrade process have been given without rectification
to developing countries. This malign form of foreign aid changes what should be a reduction
in the world total of waste light into an increase that is likely to persist for decades.
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