Earth Hour marks 10 years of starting conversations about conservation
Posted March 25, 2017 7:37 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – It’s that time of year again. Tonight marks the 10th annual Earth Hour, when we power down our lights and electronics for 60 minutes and talk about energy conservation and climate change.
Earth Hour started in Sydney, Australia back in 2007 and has since grown to the more than 7,000 cities that took part last year. Historically, BC’s participation has been spotty, but Mora Scott with BC Hydro says it’s more of a symbolic event than anything else. “It’s really an opportunity to talk about energy conservation and what types of things our customers can do to save power at home,” she explains. However, Scott says there is less emphasis on how many homes and businesses take part in the exercise itself. “No, it’s really just an opportunity for us to raise awareness about conservation and, you know, to get the discussion going around that.”
Scott points out there is also much more to conserving energy than merely turning out the lights. She figures out the typical Canadian home has more than 25 electronic devices that use standby power. “So this can actually account for up to 10 per cent of your average household energy use,” she explains. “So we recommend unplugging unused electronics like phone chargers and things like that and using advance power bars to manage standby power to automatically turn off multiple devices.”
Scott also recommends checking out the handy power usage tool on the BC Hydro website.
Familiar landmarks around the globe from the Eiffel Tower to the Empire State Building will spend an hour in darkness for Earth Hour. Many local landmarks are no exception. “City Hall, the central library, the HR MacMillan Planetarium, the Museum [of Vancouver], and even our neighbourhood energy utility stacks that kind of light up to show the energy use, we shut those off as well,” explains Doug Smith, Director of Sustainability with the City of Vancouver.
Smith says Earth Hour is a big part of the City of Vancouver’s conservation plans. “It’s a component of Vancouver’s overall long term strategies for renewable energy and for the Greenest City Action Plan,” he adds. “We plan to have the city running on 100 per cent renewable energy before 2050 and this is one of those steps in that direction.”
Earth Hour runs from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m tonight.
