Goodbye, orange nights – St. Albert’s streetlamps are going LED starting next week.
And they won’t cost the city a cent.
FortisAlberta announced this week that it would begin replacing some 5,800 high-pressure sodium streetlights in St. Albert with light-emitting diode models starting Oct. 24. It’s part of a $30 million campaign by the company to swap in LED lights in six communities.
FortisAlberta owns about 95 per cent of St. Albert’s streetlights.
The company asked the city to support this changeover earlier this year, which was approved by the Alberta Utilities Commission, said Robin Benoit, the city’s director of engineering. FortisAlberta wants to use these energy-efficient fixtures to reduce their need to build more power lines.
“It’s not costing St. Albert anything,” he added – St. Albert will pay for the lights over time through the energy savings it gets from the bulbs.
The LEDs (which resemble a standard fixture except with a row of LEDs instead of a bulb) have about a 20-year lifespan, about four times that of a regular streetlamp, FortisAlberta spokesperson Natasha Russell said.
Benoit said the LEDs are highly directional, which means they will produce much less light pollution. They also produce a brighter, white light (Russell compared it to moonlight) instead of the orange of sodium lamps, improving visibility.
Russell said the lamps should save the city about 2.3 million kWh/year of electricity, which was the greenhouse-gas equivalent to taking 317 cars off the road or planting 68,072 trees each year.
While she could not say where in St. Albert the changeover would start, Russell said the city’s streetlamps should be fully converted by mid-December.
Benoit said the city plans to convert the remaining five per cent of St. Albert’s streetlamps to LEDs later. (The St. Anne Promenade already has such lights.)
Questions should go to Marci Ng at [email protected].
Alberta’s environment minister will be in St. Albert next weekend as part of a free conference on the Pope and climate change.
Up to 200 people are expected to come to the St. Albert Parish Hall this Oct. 29 for a free symposium on ecology, economy and Laudato Si’ (Pope Francis’s recent encyclical, or teaching document, on the environment and climate change).
The forum is being organized by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate as part of the group’s 200th anniversary in Canada and the 100th anniversary of the death of Father Albert Lacombe, said Lucie Leduc, event co-organizer and executive director of the Star of the North Retreat Centre.
Bob McKeon, a retired professor of social ethics at Newman Theological College, will speak at the forum about the implications of Laudato Si’.
In this 82-page document, Francis says Mother Earth “cries out to us” due to our irresponsible use and abuse of its resources, and that this abuse goes against Christian teachings. Using both scientific and theological evidence, he lays out the need to bring all of humanity together for a new dialogue on how we are shaping the future of the planet.
“We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all,” Francis writes.
Francis calls for the world to move away from fossil fuels, and warns that the greatest impacts of climate change will fall on the poor, McKeon said.
“At a very basic level, he calls for an ecological conversion,” he said, and a change in how we live our lives.
“This document is not just addressed to Catholics. It’s really addressed to everyone on the planet, as he subtitles it, ‘(On Care for) Our Common Home.’”
Chief Tony Alexis of the Alexis Nakota Sioux First Nation will give an indigenous perspective on the economy, ecology and culture at the forum, Leduc said. Alberta Environment Minister Shannon Phillips will address Alberta’s plan for climate change as part of a panel discussion with Kinder Morgan’s Ian Anderson and Andrew Read of the Pembina Institute.
The forum runs from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. next Saturday Oct. 29 at 3 St. Vital Ave. Call 780-459-5511 to register.
