Lighting policy stables

A growing group of dairy farmers choose to provide their dairy cattle with additional lighting with high-power artificial lighting during seasons with shorter sunlight periods. Often this lighting is done in conjunction with an open barn, a fairly new barn type with partially opened facades to optimize natural lighting and aeration of the cattle.

Impact

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

Policy Development

To prevent unnecessary light emission in the outlying area as much as possible, policy has been developed, in which LTO Noord and the Dutch Foundation for Lighting Science (NSVV) have also been involved. The policy has been articulated in several policy rules (Chapter 8.4) so that it is clear to entrepreneurs how the municipality will act in the case of existing and new open stables with powerful artificial lighting.

The new policy in a nutshell

The premise of the policy is, that the goal that the agricultural entrepreneur pursues with artificial lighting can continue to be achieved. The policy is committed to minimizing light emissions and minimizing energy consumption. The policy's requirements for new situations are slightly higher than those for existing situations. Once the lighting system of an optimized existing situation or of a new situation is changed, it is also referred to as a new situation.

New situations

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

Existing situations

Existing situations received the offer to participate in a unique optimization project for which a Provincial subsidy was made available. In cooperation with the participating dairy farmers, the municipality, LTO Noord and the province of Fryslân experimentally optimized all existing situations in 2012 to 2014 using (fairly) easy-to-apply high-quality techniques. This successfully reduced light emissions by an average of 80%, while increasing the light level in the barn by 17%. Tytsjerksteradiel is the first municipality in the Netherlands to address light emission from open barns in this way.