Jessica’s Notes

In line with the fight against global warming, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has called on Malaysians to switch off all non-used lights for an hour, from 8.30pm-9.30pm on March 28 (Earth Hour).

This campaign was initiated in 2007, Australia. In 2008, many countries including 35 official flagship cities and also 400 supporting cities have participated in this campaign.

As for Malaysia, I believe it would be the first to be held in big scale. As off today, many iconic landmarks such as KLTower, Angkasapuri, Sunway Pyramid, MidValley Megamall, etc., in Malaysia have pledged their commitments for the ‘Earth Hour’ campaign.

The benefits of this campaign is obvious - energy saving -> reduces CO2 released -> reduces global warming. The amount of energy saved just in 1 hour by switching the lights and non-used electricity off, is quite alarming. Here are some figures from various countries which have participated in this campaign before:

• “Toronto saved 900 megawatt-hours of electricity. 8.7% was saved if measured against a typical March.”
• “Ireland, as a whole, had a reduction in electricity use of about 1.5% for the evening.In the three-hour period between 18:30 and 21:30, there was a reduction of 50 megawatts, saving 150 megawatt-hours, or approximately 6 tonnes of carbon dioxide.”
• “In Dubai, where external lighting on several major city landmarks was turned off and street lighting in selected areas was dimmed by 50%, the Electricity and Water Authority reported savings of 100 megawatt-hours of electricity.”
• “The best result was from Christchurch, New Zealand. The city reported a drop of 13% in electricity demand.”
• “Melbourne, Australia saved 10.1% of electricity. Sydney, being the city that participated both 2007 and 2008 Earth Hour, cut 8.4% electricity consumption.”

So friends, what are you waiting for, let’s switch off our lights too.

For more info about Earth Hour:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Hour
http://www.earthhour.org/
http://thestar.com.my/