An 'adaptive lighting' project in Canberra, which reduced the brightness of streetlights by up to half, showed a 25 per cent reduction in light pollution.

Lights on Canberra 's streets were turned up and down for the project, revealing more of the night sky .An " adaptive lighting " project in Canberra , which reduced the brightness of streetlights by up to half, showed a 25 per cent reduction in light pollution .

The project used around 30,000 "smart" streetlights in Canberra during off-peak times, and also found a reduction in carbon emissions.It's hoped the approach can be applied elsewhere, with the New Zealand cities of Auckland and Christchurch already looking into it.Looking up at the thousands of street lights that illuminate our cities, former town planner and designer Danny Bettay has always asked one simple question.

"And over 200 years of having these infrastructures embedded in our environment, we have slowly come to realise that there's some environmental harms of technologies that we've created in the past." In order to reduce the impact street lighting has on the environment, Mr Bettay initiated a trial in Canberra of something called "adaptive lighting" — dimming or brightening street lights to match people's needs at the time.; house lights ; sport lights . Solutions to light pollution: changing street lights to LED ; dimming street lights to 70 per cent ; changing sport lights from cool to warm LEDs ; shielding outside lights .