How a European project brought the fight against light pollution to Luxembourg
Scientists increasingly raise the alarm about the environmental and health impacts of light pollution. But measures to reduce it often meet apathy or, on the contrary, vehement opposition – for, as in Luxembourg, security concerns and “myths” around darkness sit deep within the population.
Arms folded and casually leaned back, public lighting consultant Daniel Gliedner bemusedly observed the heated debate that he had helped unleash at the local community hall in Harlange, a small village nested in the north of Luxembourg, on a recent spring evening.
As night was falling, a dozen members of the municipality’s environment commission had gathered for Gliedner’s two-hour crash-course on how to tackle light pollution – an issue increasingly investigated for its negative impacts on nature, wildlife and human health alike.
But as usual, one suggestion – partially turning off the lights – had been enough to plunge the room into a frenzied exchange of arguments (“Now what about people who rely on public transport very early or late? Should they wait for the bus in the dark?,” one participant asked) and counter-arguments (“But can you imagine how much energy – and money – we could save with this?,” another immediately interjected).
“Humans don’t like change. We’re used to everything and everywhere being lit, and you can’t simply switch off a habit like that,” Gliedner, who has worked in the lighting sector for over thirty years, later said.
Loss of the night
In Europe, the sky rarely turns dark anymore as street lights, buildings and billboards artificially brighten up the night: according to a 2016 study, almost 90% of the continent experience light-polluted nights. Often, this comes as the result of excessive and poor lighting design, where unfocused light shines upwards into the sky instead of the area it is supposed to illuminate.
But while fixes are theoretically relatively straightforward and come with added co-benefits – as Gliedner likes to put it, “you save considerable amounts of energy, with nature protection included free of charge” -, initial fear and rejection, like in Harlange, are often hard to overcome.
“The huge advantage of light is that it is so easy to control the pollution: once you switch it off, it literally disappears at the speed of light! So unlike with chemicals or exhaust fumes, nothing remains,” said Dr. Lukas Schuler, a Swiss expert who oversaw the first assessment of light pollution in the Grand Duchy. “The flipside, however, is that people rarely take it as a serious issue.”
Although still a largely understudied and overlooked issue, light pollution has recently emerged as a major concern within the scientific community. More and more research is starting to link it back to sleep disturbances, chronic diseases like diabetes and, crucially, the cascading erosion of biodiversity.
“Who really uses the night? 100% of bats, 90% of amphibians and 60% of insect species,” one of Gliedner’s presentation slides read. “Human light and noise can be insurmountable barriers for animals, fragmenting their habitats and essentially caging them in,” the expert added.
Light pollution can notably disrupt natural hunting, reproduction and migration patterns, even for day-active species, as the artificial illumination tricks them into believing it is still day.
From Friesland to La Palma
In Luxembourg, awareness around light pollution only really took off in 2017. That year, the Naturpark Our, a natural reserve arching some 300km2 along the border with Germany, joined another seven regional authorities from across the continent to form “Night Light Europe”, a collaborative project financed to the tune of nearly 1.5 million euros (or 85% of the total budget) by the European Regional Development Fund.
With participants ranging from the province of Friesland in the Dutch Wadden Sea to La Palma in the Spanish Canary Islands, the programme fostered an unprecedented exchange of ideas on how to tackle light pollution and translate those “best practices” into regional policies.
“Before Night Light, no one in Luxembourg really talked about light pollution; now, there’s even a dedicated paragraph in the government’s coalition agreement,” Gliedner said.
For Laurent Spithoven, who at the time coordinated Night Light’s Luxembourgish section, the first-hand experience of seeing what other participants had put into place proved especially useful.
“We’d all meet in one project partner’s region, and there was always this “wow”-effect: whilst we were starting everything from scratch, La Palma for instance had voted a so-called ‘law for the protection of the night sky’ over twenty years ago,” he said.
Deconstructing the “myths” about darkness
The interregional working group rapidly established lacking public awareness and adequate regulations as the main obstacles to reducing light pollution. Although numerous studies disprove that absence of lighting leads to higher rates of traffic accidents or burglaries, the popular belief still sits deep.
“The subjective feeling of insecurity is just difficult to remove,” Tom Glod, a teacher and councilman at the Stauséigemeng in Harlange, said during Gliedner’s presentation.
According to Annette Krop-Benesch, a chronobiologist and expert on light pollution, “one of the best ways to take away fear and ‘myths’ about darkness therefore is to actually experience it.”
Inspired by the Spanish region of Avila, where primary school children learn about the “protection of the night sky” as part of their curriculum since 2018, the Luxembourgish team launched pedagogical events like night hikes, star observations and even a “Night-Light” festival.
They also quickly carried out first on-the-ground experimentations: from December 2017, villages in the municipality of Putscheid stopped illuminating public buildings, like the town hall or churches, between 11pm and 6am. Some also partly, or totally, refurbished the lighting infrastructure.
“Surprisingly, both methods yielded similar results,” said Dr. Schuler, the managing director of Dark Sky Switzerland who evaluated the experiment. “It really showed us that, to reduce light pollution, you don’t necessarily have to invest a lot: indeed, just replacing old natrium light-bulbs with modern LED-technology and shielding lamp heads can halve light emissions.” Electricity consumption also dropped by 80%.
Accelerated by the global energy crisis, around a third of the Luxembourgish municipalities at least partially extinguish public lighting today, Spithoven estimated.
Although the Night Light Europe programme officially ended in December 2021, its legacy persists – notably in the person of Daniel Gliedner, who continues touring the country on the hunt for increasing lighting efficiency. Today, the expert works for the Naturpark Our full-time. “In a certain way, I owe my job to Interreg,” he said with a laugh.
Recently, Gliedner advised several villages on the installation of movement sensors, which turn on the light only when a human presence is detected. Still, initiatives remain voluntary; so far, the government hasn’t formalised a law on combating light pollution.
“We’ve come a long way, but there’s still far to go,” the public lighting advisor said as he left the community hall in Harlange.
This article was produced as part of The Newsroom 27 competition, organised by Slate.fr with the financial support of the European Union. The article reflects the views of the author and the European Commission cannot be held responsible for its content or use.
