Guest post by Russ Rodrigues
On Saturday, March 31st at 8.30pm (local time) WWF is inviting you and everyone around the world to celebrate Earth Hour 2012 by turning off non-essential lights for sixty minutes to “protect the planet”.
Now, I’m all for saving electricity and lowering my utility bills, though I can’t help but wonder… does the collective action of millions of people turning off their lights have any real, tangible impact on our planet? Can an hour of conspicuous conservation actually help us achieve our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets? Or is Earth Hour merely another exercise in self-satisfying slacktivism, achieving nothing more than the squishy “feel-good” objective of “raising awareness”?
To answer these questions and get a sense of how effective Earth Hour really is, let’s look at the results of last year’s effort, specifically in the province of Ontario, Canada (where I happen to live).
Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) reported that that on March 26th, 2011, between 8:30pm and 9:30pm, due to conservation action during the last episode of Earth Hour, province-wide demand for electricity fell by 360 megawatts or 2.1% compared to a typical Saturday evening in late March.
Let’s simply assume that all 360 MWh of power demand was actually eliminated, rather than being merely postponed. Since it would be difficult to quantify the impact of time-shifting household activities, let’s just be generous and ignore it altogether.
How big a deal is 360 MWh? At Ontario’s blended average retail electricity price of 7.74 cents per kWh, that 360 MWh of reduced consumption amounts to a province-wide total cash savings of $24,864. One could, perhaps, compare that savings to the money spent promoting Earth Hour in Ontario by the WWF, various levels of governments, and numerous corporate partners, to say nothing of the costs incurred by the individual participants. But I don’t imagine that would be a favourable comparison.
So cost savings aside, how big an impact did Ontario’s Earth Hour have on the province’s CO2 emissions? Let’s ignore the extra emissions generated by people who traveled to and from public gatherings, or by those who lit paraffin wax candles (each of which emits about as much fossil-fuel derived CO2 per hour as a compact fluorescent light bulb). For simplicity, we’ll just focus on the CO2 emissions from the electricity that was saved.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), non-baseload electricity emits an average of 690 g of CO2 per kWh into the atmosphere. So, by simple math, by conserving 360 MW of electric power during Earth Hour, Ontarians reduced their CO2 emissions by a total of 248 metric tonnes.
248 tonnes. That sounds pretty impressive, doesn’t it? And it isn’t really that difficult to achieve… in fact, it’s even kind of fun. Perhaps we could just have a few more Earth Hours each year, and have some real impact on our emissions reduction targets. So, how many Earth Hours would it take? Once every quarter? One per month? Or maybe make it a fortnightly event?
In 2007, Ontario introduced its Climate Change Action Plan action to reduce total GHG emissions. This action plan established an annual GHG reduction target “6% below 1990 levels by 2014, a reduction of 61 megatonnes relative to business-as-usual” (pg 6). By eliminating 248 tonnes of CO2 emissions, Earth Hour achieved 0.000407% of this target.
Or, looked at another way, it would take nearly 246,000 Earth Hours to achieve the province’s annual emissions reduction target. Unfortunately, there are only 8760 hours in a year, so it would require a little more than 28 years of sitting in the dark to make good on a single year’s emissions reduction target. The WWF certainly isn’t kidding when it asks Earth Hour participants to sustain their actions “beyond the hour.”
But details like this aren’t what Earth Hour is about. It’s about demonstrating our commitment to the planet… about taking a stand on climate change… about promoting environmental consciousness. It’s a symbol of hope for the future. It’s an opportunity to light lots of pretty candles (preferably of the carbon-neutral, beeswax variety) and unite as a community in celebration of… well, uniting as a community. Yes, it’s all that and countless other fluffy intangibles.
So, you might as well just enjoy Earth Hour. While switching off your lights won’t achieve any material impact in terms of reducing emissions or protecting the planet, at least you can shave a bit off your electric bill while feeling good about yourselves. And of course, you’ll be doing your part to “raise awareness”.
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Spreadsheet for the calculations: Earth Hour Calculations (.xlsx)
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Why don’t we have the power companies shut everyone’s power off for an hour instead, and see how everyone like it?
Lights are a minimal part of an overall power bill, particularly if you’re like me and have CFL and some LED lightbulbs. The HVAC and appliances dwarf lights in power consumption….
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens to Canada in 20 years if we see another Little Ice age or some sort assuming it actually happens…
I want anyone who’s considering turning off lights to know that I am going to turn ON every light I can during this hour, just so you can know that your efforts to save the planet are all wasted.
Why? Because that’s how I roll, babyeee!
I would like to help and turn off all the wasteful street lights in our neighborhood, but it seems near impossible to get those things turned off. Go figure.
We should do this simply to reduce light pollution, so we can enjoy the night sky — on a clear night, that is. We should do this at least once a week for the benefit of astronomy. 🙂
Earth Hour…. yay.
I usually drag out all the floodlights I can get a hold of and point them skywards. It’s worth the extra kilowatts just to get into the satellite photo with my own little pixel.
With apologies to the ‘Earth Hour’ website (http://www.earthhour.org/), I submit the following….By way of introduction, I do think that it is VERY unfortunate that ‘Earth Hour’ would choose the date of their special hour to exactly coincide with ‘Engineering and Scientific Achievement Hour’.
ABOUT ENGINEERING AND SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENT HOUR
Hundreds of millions of people, businesses and governments around the world unite each year to support the largest Engineering and Scientific event in history – Engineering and Scientific Achievement Hour.
In isolated pockets around the globe, engineers, scientists and other dissident supporters of the truth ignored the force-fed glowbull warmist lies and propaganda as disseminated by a willingly duped and thuggish media by sending out their own powerful message for acknowledgement of the great engineering and scientific achievements that have truly allowed the comfort and pursuit of happiness by all to be a reality. It also ushered in a new era with members going Beyond the Call of Duty to commit to lasting action for the common sense approach to the wellbeing of all who live on the planet. Without a doubt, it’s shown how great things can be achieved when people come together for a common cause.
Some call it war!! And the metric (in Ontario) to see who wins this war will be this…. http://www.ieso.ca/ Which side will move the scale from where it would be for a typical Saturday at the end of March? Those who are against Engineering and Scientific Achievement day or those earth worshipping whackos who want to return us all to the Dark Ages?
Do your part… for the time from 8:30 to 9:30 pm on March 31, turn on every electrical appliance in your house. If you have electric heaters and gas… turn them both on and open every window you have. Let your cars, snow blowers, lawnmowers and garden tractors idle in the driveway. It’s actually very simple… for the one hour of Engineering and Scientific Achievement Day, switch on EVERY SINGLE ITEM YOU OWN THAT ACTUALLY REQUIRES ENERGY… ESPECIALLY ELECTRIC APPLIANCES THAT TAKE LOTS OF POWER. For this one hour, you can even leave the fridge door wide open. Do all the baking that you had been planning on doing and in fact, leave the oven door open while you are doing it…perhaps celebrate by having oven cooked pizza. All those tasks that you have been putting off? Do them during this 8:30 to 9:30 pm timeframe! Vacuum the house, do a steam clean of all your carpets and so on….
Perhaps in advance of the great event, send out literature to all your neighbours and run a contest…. Record your kWh right at 8:30 and again at 9:30 pm and see who increased their kWh the most! Have a prize for the winner… if the neighbourhood is large, the prize could be something that was truly symbolic of Engineering and Scientific Achievement day… Something like a Ford F350 4 wheel drive would be appropriate!
Thanks to this group for the inspiration to finally recognize the great achievements and sacrifices of the engineers and scientists who have made our lives so much better. Otherwise, we would all be living in mud houses, eating nothing but grubs and dying off at a disease rate that threatened our extinction. http://www.earthhour.org/
“But details like this aren’t what Earth Hour is about.”
Nope, it’s about total propagandic nonsense!
And miss Hockey Night in Canada? Not too f&%$ing likely!
Instead of an hour, or an hour a couple of times, we should always propose some serious effort instead.
A reduction to eighty percent of current levels is one of the target numbers I’ve heard – so that’s about -two-months- per year.
So my stock response is: I’ll turn off all of my power for an hour to show solidarity and a willingness to listen, if you’ll personally get to -half- your target numbers during January and report back.
Oh? Very difficult here with heating and all? Then you need to move to save Gaia….
I am going to turn on every light I have, and open the curtains for every one to see.
@ur momisugly Larry Geiger says:
March 10, 2012 at 11:53 am
I would like to help and turn off all the wasteful street lights in our neighborhood, but it seems near impossible to get those things turned off. Go figure.
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That’s easy. .22 . And you’d be ensuring job security for quite a few people. 😉
Curiousgeorge,
As Bastiat would say, look at all the gov’t jobs that would create. Win-win!
[/sarc]
$27,864 🙂
…anyone ever figured out what it takes to grow a joint in someone’s basement?
Just try taking their pot away………………
As I did last year, this year too I’ll mark Earth Hour by turning on all the lights. We ought to be celebrating this great human invention, not condemning it.
“Earth Hour”
Sheesh – we went through this nonsense last year.
Well, I’ll turn off my lights for an hour if NASA, NOAA, and all academic institutions doing climate “science” turn off all of their computers for an hour, especially those running climate models…
I have several 500w spotlights, I like to point them up to the sky and turn them all on.
“So, by simple math, by conserving 360 MW of electric power during Earth Hour, Ontarians reduced their CO2 emissions by a total of 248 metric tonnes.
248 tonnes. That sounds pretty impressive, doesn’t it?”´
Well, consideríng ….
that 360 MW means a fairly small coal-power-plant;
that there always has to be a perfect second-sharp balance between consumption and generation;
that Earth Hour will mean a sudden drop-off of consumption of 360 MW in let’s say a minute;
that the 369 MW power-plant will have to go off the grid within this minute;
that the 360 MW power-plant will be off for just a short hour;
that the 360 MW power-plant will have to reconnect with the grid after one hour within let’s say a minute to counter a sudden 360 MW jump of consumption;
and consindering that coal-power-plants are pretty slow in reaction to steering and need their time to adapt, sometimes hours…
– well, then there is a very good chance that the engineers in charge will NOT shut off this small 360 MW power-plant at all, but will just let the steam off into the atmosphere, by-passing the turbine, in order to be ready to reconnect when consumption jumps up again – which means that they will not burn 1 ounce of coal less than without Earth Hour.
And then the Earth-Hour-emission-reduction will be excactly – ZERO.
But everybody shutting off the lights and saving the planet will experience a very very cosy and satisfying feeling of doing-good and being nice to Mother Earth. And that’s quite something, isn’t it?
Jay says:
March 10, 2012 at 11:54 am
I’ve considered putting black trash bags over the decorative parking lot lights at the town offices. Or shorting out their power wires. Or shooting out the lamps (a bit of a challenge given that the police department is there).
Perhaps I should just pay GeoLurking’s floodlights a visit. 🙂
I like Steve Goddard’s idea for Earth Month:
“Earth Hour is a wonderful idea, but we can do better. Everyone should give up fossil fuels for the month of January. No cars, no electricity – no food or water which has been produced or transported using fossil fuels.
Only then will we understand just how little we need heat, light, or food.”
I remember the first year they tried this, my mom got all exciting because it would be so cozy, wink wink nudge nudge, my dad, apparently, was completely terrified and suffered post traumatic stress from reliving earlier “cozy” episodes in life, rightly before having kids. :p
I wonder though if people really understand how much of their donated money to WWF for saving this or that animal actually ends up going to ad for this earth hour crap they’re pulling.
Many developing countries often suffer from quite a (unintended) few Earth Hours every day, week, year. It’s not just the light that go but the fidge, tv, desktop the lot. 😉
No point at all. But you seem to accept the pseudo science of greenhouse gases, rather than the real physics of lapse rate.
You know a great addition would be to estimate the money and CO2 spent on advertising earth hour. Hopefully it’s less than the money and CO2 saved but I imagine it’s quite a lot.