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Toulouse leaves streets in the dark with new lighting

The lights are going down in Toulouse. Yesterday, early-rising residents of the Allee Camille-Soula in the southwestern French city set out to work with the morning gloom held at bay by new technology that turns on streetlights only when pedestrians pass.

Installed on a 500m section of pavement last weekend, the streetlights double the strength of the light they cast when they detect human body heat. Ten seconds later they revert to normal.

“It’s a prototype. Nothing like this exists anywhere in the world. We pretty much built the technology ourselves,” said Alexandre Marciel, the deputy mayor in charge of works, highways, sanitation and lighting.

The aim is to cut energy consumption by about 50 percent, first on the busy street that runs between a sports stadium and university halls, then more widely. If it is a success, it will be rolled out across the city of about 450,000 people, France’s fourth-biggest.

The technology has attracted interest across France and overseas. Last month Toulouse received a deputation of town councilors from the Japanese city of Osaka.

“Anywhere where there is a significant urban density, this could make a big difference,” Marciel said.

There is a growing campaign in France against nocturnal light pollution. Last weekend saw countrywide demonstrations against the contamination of the night sky by urban lighting.

“Concern started just among astronomers and other specialists, but is now getting much more mainstream attention,” said Clara Osadtchy, one of the organizers.

Campaigners say the light produced for each person in France increased by a third between 1990 and 2000, the most recent date for which statistics exist, and has continued to grow since. Astronomers say that an unpolluted night sky can only be seen from Corsica or, on the mainland, from a small area of Quercy, high on the remote southern flanks of the Massif Central.

Cash-strapped and increasingly environmentally conscious communities are now trying to cut electricity consumption. Many cities have changed streetlight bulbs for less wasteful models. After years where cheap tariffs and plentiful power meant all-night lighting, smaller rural communities are returning to earlier practices and turning off streetlights after midnight.

“The new technology may be a good idea for somewhere like Toulouse, but in the countryside, the best thing is to just turn the lights off,” said Veronique Clerin, of the National Association for the Protection of the Sky and the Nocturnal Environment.

Marciel, an elected official from the Radical Left party, has grand ambitions.

“Imagine if instead of thinking of movements in town as consuming energy, we thought of ways they could generate energy instead. The possibilities are without limit,” he said.

One project under consideration is to connect dynamos to the thousands of free bicycles available in Toulouse. The energy they generate could be then be “harvested” overnight and used for streetlights or the national grid, Marciel said.

There is still some way to go. Paris still promotes itself as “the city of light.” Coinciding with the protests about night pollution were celebrations involving spectacular illuminations of the Eiffel tower.
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