Manhattan’s glittering skyline makes Aja Corliss feel proud to live in New York City, and its soaring buildings represent her ambition to move upward in life.
But one night, while taking the subway to her apartment in Lower Manhattan, Ms. Corliss wondered, “Why are those lights still on?”
Ms. Corliss, 24, posed her question to The New York Times, noting that despite being “in love with the nighttime cityscape views,” she is concerned about how much energy all those lights drain. Her question is part of a project from The Times that invites readers to join in our reporting process.
Con Edison, the utility that provides power to New York, estimated that 5,200 megawatt-hours of electricity keep Manhattan lit overnight.
“The reality of this is, about 99 percent of those lights need to be on at night,” said John Catuogno, the director of resource planning and forecasting at the utility. “Aside from decorative lighting, people need to live, trade and work.”
Here’s a breakdown of why the lights stay on, and why some people want to dim them.
Residents live in tall buildings
Many towers serve as office space, but others are residential buildings. In both kinds of skyscrapers, emergency exits usually stay lit — even when many New Yorkers are sleeping.
Some lights are required to help keep aircraft from crashing
The Federal Aviation Administration generally requires that buildings higher than 200 feet, or about 20 stories, be lit or marked by light. On some of Manhattan’s larger towers, for instance, a red light blinks atop a long antenna.
For new buildings that are slated to exceed 200 feet, the F.A.A. asks developers to complete an aeronautical study to determine whether the structure needs lights to avoid potential hazards to airplanes and helicopters.
People love the view
Instagram teems with photos of the lights in New York, and tourists seem to particularly enjoy the vista, whether they are gazing at billboards in Times Square or taking helicopter and boat tours for a bird’s-eye view of skyscrapers, including the iconic Empire State Building.
The building, which is usually lit in its signature white, has embraced some decorative lighting — orange for Halloween, green for Eid al-Fitr, blue and orange for the New York Knicks — since the Bicentennial in 1976, when red, white and blue shone from its top.
Anthony E. Malkin, the chief executive officer of Empire State Realty Trust, which runs the Empire State Building, said the tower’s external lighting system was overhauled in 2011 with energy-efficient LED bulbs and a new control system that can display 16 million color combinations.
Those lights shut off at 2 a.m., Mr. Malkin said, with one exception. “If movie studios are filming New York City, and they’re filming at 2, 3 or 4 a.m.,” he said, “they reach out to us and ask us to leave the lights on.”
The Empire State Building’s internal lights have been mostly retrofit with motion detector sensors, he added. If light is coming from one of its windows, it is likely that someone is inside.
But CO2 and light pollution can be a problem
Lighting is more energy-efficient than it was only five or 10 years ago, but the night skyline is still responsible for about 1.7 billion pounds of planet-warming CO2 a year, said Mr. Catuogno.
The 1.7 billion pounds account for about 1.5 percent of the city’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, according to an estimate by Con Edison.
In June, New York State pledged that by 2050, all of its electricity would come from carbon-free sources.
Light pollution is also a scourge for nocturnal animals, interfering with reproduction and migration. Birds, for example, that are drawn to light may crash into buildings, particularly ones with transparent or reflective windows.
These collisions kill many as 230,000 birds in the city every year, according to New York City Audubon.
Some have fought to dim the lights
Donovan J. Richards, a councilman from Queens, has been trying to dial back internal and external lighting in the city since at least 2015, when he sponsored a bill that would have required thousands of buildings to turn off or dim lights overnight.
“I think one of the most important strategies we can have as a city is to conserve energy,” Mr. Richards said. “It’s a no-brainer that if you’re not using your lights, turn them off.”
He added: “I have a 3-year-old son who practices this. He knows he has to go to bed and turn his lights out. If a 3-year-old has the discipline to turn the lights out when he’s not using them, then there’s no reason that New York City can’t find its way to do that, too.”
The 2015 bill ultimately languished, with opponents — including real estate and food industry leaders — saying that dimmed lights would threaten public safety.
Others expressed worry over playing favorites, if government workers were to choose which destinations were notable enough to stay aglow.
In 2016, the city began requiring owners of midsize buildings to retrofit lighting systems in nonresidential spaces. It also required them to ensure that lights are off when a room is not occupied and set efficiency standards for exterior illumination.
“New York City is leading globally on reducing emissions, and we will keep doing so to reach our goal of carbon neutrality by 2050,” said Julia Arredondo, a City Hall spokeswoman. “Our retrofit programs are reducing emissions, making our air cleaner and ensuring New Yorkers are healthier.”
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