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Should companies be required to turn off lights during off-hours?


Neo

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I'm sure most of us here are a huge fan of seeing our city's skyline lit up at night, but by doing so this increases the carbon footprint by a large amount.

Some companies are staffed and in operation at all hours, but many are not, though they leave the lights on 24/7/365. I previously worked for a law firm in downtown Chicago in a prominent building, and regardless if the offices were occupied or not, everyone would leave their lights on. Both floors were completely lit.

Should cities require that unoccupied lights be turned off in office buildings? Perhaps a better solution would be to require motion sensing lights in office buildings, much like the ones many businesses have installed in restrooms that automatically shut off the lights when no one is around.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I think this is just going to happen as a natural phenomenon as technologies advance. Most companies will not instill a "lights off" policy, but as technologies(like motion sensors) make things easier, they will become more standard. Many companies are beginning to understand how energy consumption effects their bottom line and are making changes accordingly. It might take time to become the standard, but slowly, i think it will be common in the next few decades.

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The lights in my companies office buildings turn off at 7pm, and all retail locations have or are being upgraded to motion detectors for lights in their offices/breakrooms. Power conservation techniques are reviewed constantly.

I agree, even as much as I like a brightly lit skyline, that it's very wasteful to lite up our tallest buildings all night long. The towers in Winston-Salem seem to shut off 'vanity' lighting around midnight..

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Might save money, but probably wouldn't lower the electric plant's carbon footprint. It has to run at a certain level whether all the elctricity it generates is used or not.

Not entirely true, if you keep consumption across the board the same as it currently is then you are correct. If everyone left their lights on 24/7 imagine the amount of NEW power plants would be required to sustain that output level? The issue this is addressing would keep new power plants from being required by saving the footprint of existing connections to the power plant.

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  • 11 months later...

The government should have not mandate anything like this. At the same time, i'd think companies would want to shut lights down just to save money! This should be a supply-demand thing. If somebody wants to pay for it, let 'em pay! I conserve both at home and at work - it just makes sense to do it - I don't want to waste money. As for the whole carbon footprint thing, we need to do less worrying about that and more banging on our idiot politicians' doors demanding more nuke plants, solar farms, wind farms, etc. - not too much carbon there, eh? Nukes ain't the final solution, but they would provide a lot of power, a lot of jobs, and no carbon, this thing people are so worried about. Combine that with accelerated work on other technologies (like solar towers) and we wouldn't have to worry about "rolling blackouts", and crap like that. We also DO need other infrastructure upgrade to go along with it.

Come on Washington, heads out of rear-ends, hands out of MY wallet for stupidity, let's put OUR money to good use.

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