Lighting policy for stables

A growing group of dairy farmers is choosing to provide extra lighting to their dairy cattle with powerful artificial lighting during seasons with shorter periods of sunlight. This lighting often takes place in combination with an open barn, a relatively new type of barn with partially open facades to optimize the natural lighting and ventilation of the cattle.

Consequences

The combination of artificial lighting and open facades can easily lead to unnecessary light emission. Unnecessary light emission in the virtually unlit rural area during the dark seasons is harmful to the fauna and undesirable for humans.

Policy development

To prevent unnecessary light emissions in rural areas as much as possible, a policy has been developed with the involvement of LTO Noord and the Dutch Foundation for Illumination Technology (NSVV). The policy is outlined in several policy rules (chapter 8.4) to clarify for entrepreneurs how the municipality will act regarding existing and new open barns with powerful artificial lighting.

The new policy at a glance

The basic principle of the policy is that the goal that the agricultural entrepreneur pursues with the artificial lighting can continue to be achieved. The policy focuses on minimizing light emissions and minimizing energy consumption. The requirements that the policy places on new situations are slightly higher than those for existing situations. As soon as the lighting installation of an optimized existing situation or a new situation is changed, it is also considered a new situation.

New situations

New situations (new lighting in existing or new barns) must now be reported by means of an environmental notification or an environmental permit with a professional lighting plan. This should demonstrate that the new situation can meet the established goals for new situations described in the policy document. To achieve these goals, requirements will now be imposed on the lighting installation and the techniques used. High-quality techniques that can be applied are described in the policy document. The chosen combination of high-quality techniques must demonstrably lead to the achievement of the goals, including a light emission that remains within the established maximum permissible values.

Existing situations

Existing situations have been offered the opportunity to participate in a unique optimization project for which a Provincial subsidy has been made available. The municipality, LTO Noord, and the province of Fryslân, in collaboration with the participating dairy farmers, experimentally optimized all existing situations between 2012 and 2014 using (relatively) simple to apply high-quality techniques. This successfully reduced light emissions by an average of 80%, while the light level in the barn increased by 17%. Tytsjerksteradiel is the first municipality in the Netherlands to tackle the light emission of open barns in this way.