Reasons for Insufficient Success of Light Pollution Prevention Legislation in Slovenia

Abstract

In 2007, Slovenia was one of the first countries to adopt light pollution prevention legislation with the Decree on limiting values of light pollution [1]. As such, Slovenian experience is ideal for studying the effectiveness of the taken measures and of remaining factors, preventing fully resolving the problem.

Undisputed progress has been made with the Decree in many respects. Different sources of light pollution are covered and the country is largely respecting the Decree requirements. Following the requirement to harmonize the lighting with the Decree by 2017, today more or less all street lighting meets the ULOR = 0 condition and other most problematic issues have been mostly resolved. Following the technology advances, LED lighting is largely introduced, thus making it easier to meet the Decree limitation of power consumption.

Despite all the progress, the country is facing a wide spread of light pollution, as the road and street lighting are intensively spreading to new locations. The Decree sought to limit the total amount of public lighting with a limit of annual power consumption of 44,5 kWh/capita, but with technology shift to LED the effect of this limit has failed. Furthermore, the technical measures and quantitative limits are not sufficient to provide ecologically and spatially appropriate lighting. In the lack of comprehensive eco-spatial policies, based also on much stricter estimations of cost/benefit ratio, the lighting is almost completely subject to the technical decisions of the state road authorities, reckless civilizational pressure on the municipality level and international lighting standards, strongly influencing both previously listed factors.