BOMA/Chicago, City of Chicago and ComEd Urge Year Round Exterior Lighting Guidelines

BOMA/Chicago, City of Chicago and Commonwealth Edison Urge Buildings to Implement Year-Round Exterior Decorative Lighting Guidelines By Betsy Kraat

CHICAGO– The Building Owners and Managers Association of Chicago (BOMA/Chicago), the City of Chicago and Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd) have united to endorse voluntary year-round Exterior Decorative Lighting Guidelines for Chicago’s buildings.

The guidelines provide year-round recommendations for all non-emergency exterior lighting, including crown and facade lighting, signage, street-level and tree lighting. When implemented throughout the city, the guidelines will reduce the carbon footprint of Chicago-area buildings, protect migratory birds and decrease light pollution.

The year-round Exterior Decorative Lighting Guidelines were formalized following several successful years of collaboration with the Earth Hour campaign, which BOMA/Chicago, ComEd and the City of Chicago have participated in since its inception in 2008. The guidelines take the Earth Hour concept one step further by encouraging Chicago’s buildings to enact climate change on a daily basis. This year, Earth Hour will be observed on the evening of March 27, when businesses and homes throughout the nation and the world will turn off their lights for one hour. Last year, more than 80 million Americans in 300 cities and nearly 1 billion people around the world participated in Earth Hour.

The voluntary year-round Exterior Decorative Lighting Guidelines contain morning- and evening-specific recommendations that mirror the changing sunrise and sunset times in order to reduce light pollution while maximizing efficiency. The morning guidelines suggest that Chicago’s buildings program their exterior lights to go on no earlier than 5 a.m. and to turn off no later than 30 minutes before official sunrise. The evening guidelines encourage buildings to turn their decorative lights on no earlier than 30 minutes after sunset. Evening lights should be powered off no later than 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and no later than 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, with the exception of July 4 and December 31, when evening lights may remain on until 1 a.m.

By endorsing the voluntary year-round Exterior Decorative Lighting Guidelines, Chicago’s buildings will help save thousands of migratory birds each year, decrease harmful carbon dioxide waste and reduce the cost of unnecessary lighting. Unshielded outdoor lights are directly responsible for 14.7 million tons of carbon dioxide waste in the United States each year and cost more than $2.2 billion annually to power, according to the International Dark-Sky Association

BOMA/Chicago
www.bomachicago.org