dark skies abuse: “

I walked past this building the other night - 90 Whitfield Street - it’s called Qube. It’s developed by Derwent London. It seemed rather flagrantly lit; all the lights on in an absolutely empty building. But there was a bloke on the corner with a tripod taking a picture so, wanting to think the best, I thought maybe they’ve just turned them on for him.

And then I walked past at about 3 o’clock this afternoon and all the lights were on then. During the day. With no-one, seemingly, there. Which is ironic since the website boasts that a ‘...presence detection system controls the lighting, both on the individual office floors and within the common parts, to ensure that lights are turned off when an area is not in use, to minimise the lighting energy consumption.‘

It would appear that there’s an over-ride while the landlord’s trying to flog the building. To give them the benefit of the doubt I guess there could have been someone in there looking around and that could have triggered all the lights. So I went back just now. 5.30 and it looked like this:

Maybe the presence detection system is detecting otherworldly presences.

I also noticed here that ‘Derwent London announces letting of 18,837 sq ft on 2nd floor to
Aegis Media Ltd’ and that if it’s the same Aegis Media that’s part of Aegis Group then their environmental policy says: ‘Energy efficiency, for example, is a key driver of our relocation and facilities policies.’

Perhaps someone from Aegis could call someone at Derwent and ask them to turn the lights off on the second floor.

My first thought about all this is that there should be some way of naming and shaming companies who do this. Developers have long environmental policy papers but I can’t find much discussion of this kind of issue.’ And it’s not just empty buildings. But I always think naming and shaming is a bad thing (Let his who is wihout sin..etc) and’ I presume developers do it because it rather effectively draws attention to their properties. Which means they’ve got a lot of money vested in leaving the lights on. So they’re not going to change easily.

So I wonder if there isn’t more of a carrot to offer them as opposed to a stick to beat them with. Could you develop a low-energy alternative to just leaving all the lights on? Something that delivers lots of attention without much energy. That ought to be possible. And maybe it could be re-deployable from one development to another as a particular building fills up with tenants.

I dunno. Maybe that would be a good thing to think about before or at geekgreen.

UPDATE: I just walked past. 9pm on a Saturday. The only lights on were in the lobby. So that’s something. And thanks for the comments below, helpful stuff.

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(Via russell davies.)