Earth Hour

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) created Earth Hour in 2007 to help people that are concerned about our planet and want to show their support for action on climate change. Households and businesses are asked to turn off their non-essential lights and other electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness about the need to take action on climate change.

 

Earth Hour 2009 was a huge global success with 3,937 cities and towns turning out their lights, across 88 countries. With almost a billion people mobilised, Earth Hour 2009 was the biggest environmental demonstration in history! Monuments such as the CN Tower, the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, the Acropolis and the Empire State Building went dark.

 

Reports of energy saved are trickling in, but in the capital city of India, Delhi’s power demand fell by 1000 megawatts (MW) on Saturday evening. The Canadian province of Ontario, excluding the city of Toronto, saw a decrease of 6% of electricity while Toronto saw a decrease of 15.1%. Swedish electricity operator Svenska Kraftnät recorded 2.1% decrease in power consumption between 8pm and 9pm, while the Philippines was able to save 611 MW of electricity during the time period – said to be equivalent to shutting down a dozen coal-fired power plants for an hour. In Ireland, the equivalent of 700,000 lights went off for the hour, leading to electricity consumption dropping 2% for the hour. Total electricity consumption dropped by about 70 MW during the period, resulting in a saving of 30 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

 

Earth Hour mobilises millions of people towards global climate change action. In December this year, world leaders will meet in Copenhagen to try to establish an international agreement for controlling greenhouse gasses. It is vital that this meeting results in a commitment to a fair and ambitious climate deal since climate change requires global cooperation to solve. The hope is that Earth Hour will help signal to our leaders that we want action.

 

Of course, each one of us has a vital role to play too. We need to continue to take action every day to reduce our own ecological footprints for the sake of the future of our beautiful planet.