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Jul 15, 2023

Editorial: Charleston's LED streetlight purchase is a bright spot

The city of Charleston is replacing its "cobrahead" streetlight fixtures, with

The city of Charleston is replacing its "cobrahead" streetlight fixtures, with help from Dominion Energy. Robert Behre/Staff

Earlier this year, we urged the city of Charleston to join with other municipalities that have worked with Dominion Energy to replace older, less efficient streetlights with better ones, and we're happy to note they are seeing the light. Other municipalities should, too, if they haven't already.

According to Post and Courier reporter Jodi Shafto, the city is replacing more than 6,800 streetlights across Charleston, not just downtown but also in West Ashley and on James Island, with energy-saving LED bulbs over the coming year. The new lights will use about $10,000 less electricity each month, and the city won't have to pay anything additional for five years; instead, the lease rate the city pays Dominion will be reduced as the bulbs are swapped out. After that, the cost of LED lighting may go down enough to minimize or eliminate any additional cost after five years.

But the good news isn't limited to what taxpayers might save. The new light bulbs and fixtures are expected to produce about 30% less greenhouse gases, and the fixtures are expected to direct more of the light toward the ground, where it's needed, rather than the sky, where it's not.

Dominion's new incentive program encourages all cities and towns in its service area to replace streetlights with more efficient ones, and it already had replaced almost 17,000 of them before Charleston came on board. The utility's goal is to finish these conversions by the end of next year, a goal we certainly support.

But the conversion of these streetlights is but one step in what we hope will be a larger, ongoing discussion about sensible changes and regulations that will reduce light pollution across the region (and beyond). Scientists are learning more about how excessive light at night harms humans and animals both physically and mentally. These negative effects include reduced sleep times, poorer sleep quality, impaired daytime functioning and obesity, while poorly designed lighting can disorient some bird, insect, turtle and fish species.

That knowledge isn't being translated into action, however, at least not nearly as fast as our metro area is growing with new subdivisions, industry and commercial clusters — all of which can play a role in making things worse. We urge local governments to consider, like several Upstate cities already have, how their outdoor lighting regulations can be modified to reduce light pollution at night.

And we urge state lawmakers to consider what steps they can take to encourage state and local entities to ensure their lighting policies do more to conserve energy, promote public health and safety and improve the look of our state. South Carolina is not among the 19 states that have passed some version of a "dark skies" law with those goals in mind. But we are encouraged that Hampton Plantation State Park is taking steps to become South Carolina's first Dark Skies Park, a designation that will recognize its efforts to curb light pollution and make the spot more appealing to amateur astronomers.

But it's not just governments that we urge to act. Developers, commercial property owners and even homeowners have a role in ensuring that our outdoor light fixtures direct light downward, shut off when they're not needed and generally minimize light loss.

So while we're encouraged that Charleston has joined other local governments in taking an important step by changing out thousands of streetlights, we must keep in mind that there are many other important and quite doable steps we all can take to improve our quality of life at night.

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