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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You nailed it! Agree with every word.
idiot indicator … consider that stolen. 🙂
I also think everybody would benefit from reading all of the excellent post by DN at March 10, 2012 at 1:22 pm
And the post by Cassandra King at March 10, 2012 at 10:09 pm deserves a read, too.
Richard
Squidly says:
March 10, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Oh goody! … I love Earth Day. It is the only day that my wife will let me to turn on all our TV’s, lights and appliances at one time! It is quite a grand celebration!
Also hoping to take a cruise past Al Gore’s house this year to see what he does this time (leaving all of my TV’s, lights and appliances on while I am gone of course).
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Please report back with pictures if possible.
Cassandra King says:
March 10, 2012 at 10:09 pm
You know, its heartbreaking to think of the hundreds of millions of human beings who have no electricity, of the hundreds of thousands of poor elderly who are unable to afford the massively increased energy bills. These self obsessed green idiots pimping their earth hour do not stop to think of the consequences of their actions, more importantly they are not being challenged. People are dying because they can no longer afford energy bills inflated by the policies the greens have peddled…..
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Unfortunately Cassandra, they are well aware of the consequences and are very happy with it because they hate the human race and want a substantial portion of it to die off.
In 1988, Britain’s Prince Philip expressed the wish that, should he be reincarnated, he would want to be a deadly virus that would reduce world population….
You then have Malthusians Margaret Mead, John Holdren (present US science Czar) the Erlichman’s…. http://inthesenewtimes.com/2009/11/29/1975-endangered-atmosphere-conference-where-the-global-warming-hoax-was-born/
Thanks to one socialist and a co-founder of the Fabian Society who was a bit of a blabber mouth we have a glimpse of “Socialism” divested of its warm fuzzy sheepskin. (Also checkout the London school of Economics, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and “The Third Way”)
[ex] [b]SOCIALISM[/b]
“Under Socialism, you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live, you would have to live well.”
George Bernard Shaw: The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, 1928, pg. 470
EXTERMINATION OF THE “SOCIALLY INCOMPATIBLE”
“The notion that persons should be safe from extermination as long as they do not commit willful murder, or levy war against the Crown, or kidnap, or throw vitriol, is not only to limit social responsibility unnecessarily, and to privilege the large range of intolerable misconduct that lies outside them, but to divert attention from the essential justification for extermination, which is always incorrigible social incompatibility and nothing else.”
[b]KILLING THOSE “UNFIT TO LIVE”[/b]
“The moment we face it frankly we are driven to the conclusion that the community has a right to put a price on the right to live in it … If people are fit to live, let them live under decent human conditions. If they are not fit to live, kill them in a decent human way. Is it any wonder that some of us are driven to prescribe the lethal chamber as the solution for the hard cases which are at present made the excuse for dragging all the other cases down to their level, and the only solution that will create a sense of full social responsibility in modern populations?”
Source: George Bernard Shaw, Prefaces (London: Constable and Co., 1934), p. 296.
Source: George Bernard Shaw, “On the Rocks” (1933), Preface.
FROM: http://www.sovereignindependent.com/?p=7948
So much for helping your fellow man. Sounds more like a desire to keep the cattle (chattel) healthy to me but then isn’t that what PETA does, demote people to the level of cattle?
I served my involuntary “earth hours” and days, and at times weeks in Eastern Europe as the inept and corrupt regimes were crapping out. Every light will be blazing in our house for sure, just to stick it to the greenie busybodies in our neighbourhood who a couple of years ago knocked on doors to remind people to “do their part” fo Mommy Earth. (Anyone know how much energy tasers use? Just kidding!)
And thanks for the advice to get high-energy stuff done at that time (baking and catching up on some work with my DeWalt table saw). Forgot that we need to “offset” the WWF marketing shtik.
Im with wwschmit i usiually turn on all lights and appliances in my house during earth hour.
It just occured to me, that those of you who have Christmas lights, and I’ve seen some spectacular stuff out there, might want to keep them strung up until the Earth Hour date to spark them up and to send a clearer message than houselights can. Perhaps some of the holiday symbols can ve reshaped to form a “HAH” (Human Accomplishment Hour).
We´ll know then, for sure, that in every house with the lights off, lives an idiot.
Anyone here want to take me up on a bet that with homes equipped with ‘smart meters’, they won’t be tracking who turned down and who turned up the electrical use during Science and Engineering Achievement Hour? In the near police state in which we live, you just might hear that knock on the door in the ensuing days and weeks ahead. The potential for that alone will make this a very worthwhile experiment….
Turning off the lights at 8.30 pm: Good one about the candle CO2!
But
Hardly any coal or coal derived CO2 saved generally
Ontario = no real savings at all!
The statement
“According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), non-baseload electricity emits an average of 690 g of CO2 per kWh into the atmosphere”
is misleading:
Firstly 8.30pm is off -peak
Ontario: “Time-of-Use off-peak period for electricity from 7 p.m. on weekdays.” (ontario.ca/energy)
The quicker firing gas and hydro etc turbines are mainly on 5-7pm
So we are talking about base load electricity.
Ontario = The government’s plan to eliminate coal-fired power by the end of 2014
Since 2003, Ontario has shut down 10 of 19 coal units.
The latest 2007 figure I found was 20% coal use, but given shutdown of units since it’s likely less. Nuclear/hydro are the overwhelming Ontario alternatives – without the CO2 emissions
That’s not all.
Also outside Ontario, coal plants are by far the main emission “culprit” (2x equivalent gas or oil fired).
But there is a fundamental misunderstanding about Coal Plants
As slow cheap base loading electricity generators they are hardly turned down at night.
So much lighting effectively burns no coal that would not be burned ANYWAY.
Even at peak hours around 5-7pm quicker supplementing gas or hydro turbines involve less emissions.
This is on top of the already small grid electricity demand, i.e. less than 1% grid electricity savings from lighting switchovers from US Dept of Energy own stats and surveys, referenced http://ceolas.net/#li171x, also with some Canadian and other data.
.
http://newnostradamusofthenorth.blogspot.com/2012/03/mauritius-will-celebrate-2012-earth.html
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/kevster1346/Mauritius.jpg
Found the Mauritius article via http://dailybayonet.com/
“Mauritius is to celebrate Earth Hour, but seems unclear on the concept.”
Another thought about “earth hour” – I also did my part after Hurricane Katrina.
My house used NO electricity for an entire month, and kept 178,560 metric tons of CO2 (248 x 24 x 30) from getting into the air. That one act of nature had the same effect as me observing the next 720 earth hours.
So I’m caught up till the year 2732. Get back with me then.
Too late. It’s the 10th of March already, and your computer is obviously on. Liar.
As for every earth hour I have been aware of, my family will make a huge effort to have every light in the house on, I will run my dishwasher, washing machine, keep the hot tub hot, turn on the the patio lights, keep the barn lights on, continue heating my house and of course as normal for any evening have 6 or so computers running. Oh, yeah and something on tv.
I believe that the increase in CO2 in our atmosphere is a positive thing. I actually wish the earth was warming because my property would be worth a fortune, but I have read a lot and I don’t think it is. And btw, my cows are happily contributing to the increase of greenhouse gases, just in case it can give them a warmer winter……
Very important: ENDLESS OIL RESERVES:
http://ep.probeinternational.org/2009/09/14/endless-oil/
robmcn says:
March 10, 2012 at 1:12 pm
No more wimpy Earth Hour, instead how about a Big Brother Earth Month?
Where the world’s greatest environmentalists get to spend 12 weeks in a house where any function or food that depends on fossil fuel is not allowed. Think, no running water, no commercial foods, no electronic communications, everything replaced with green revolution technology like with wind up torches, well water, home grown veggies. It really is about time environuts showed the rest of us how it is done.
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Excellent idea!!!
now how many of us need to send this suggestion to the makers of those dud shows to get them to bite on it?
damn it would be FUN!!! I,d even go to someones home that Has a TV to watch the fights:-)
robmcn says:
March 10, 2012 at 1:12 pm
No more wimpy Earth Hour, instead how about a Big Brother Earth Month? …. It really is about time environuts showed the rest of us how it is done.
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The demonstration should be done in Siberia in the month of January. After all they keep telling us that “Snow” will be a thing of the past…..
I believe it’s meant to be a symbolic gesture acknowledging the need for each of us to do our part in saving energy.
I appreciate the silliness of Earth Hour as much as anyone, but I don’t think consuming extra electricity just for spite is the best response. I intend to spend “Human Achievement Hour” with an adult beverage, in the comfort of my home, doing research on one of the thousands of inventors and inventions which have paved our path from energy subsistence pre-1800 to the abundance we enjoy today. I don’t care whether people turn off their lights or not, as long as they are properly grateful lights will come back on when they want them.
To Brian H, I am not in Canada. But my house in Canada is using enough electricity only to power the refridgerator and to keep the house at 12C. I checked my usage, about 7 kw a day.
Every light in my house will be lit. As they were last year and the year before. A beacon against the work of fools and tyrants. And it will only cost me about a dollar. Small price.
I live in Vietnam, the power is always going off, and on, and off and on. So I guess Vietnam is doing their bit to save the planet.
This “Earth Hour” lights shut off is a dangerous game for people to play. The main purpose for the IESO, costing us $billions each year, is to predict the electrical load for each day, in order to adjust the amount of nuclear generation required each day. If they underestimate it, coal and dirty sources are fired up for short term generation, once the Hydro generation schemes are saturated. If this Earth Hour nonsense ever actually became significant the system could end up using dirtier sources for our electrical needs. The alternative is we buy energy, on an emergency basis, from another time zone province or the coal burning Ohio generators that love to pollute us downwind suckers in Ontario.
If you love acid rain and higher prices from your meterjust keep this uneducated nonsense from the tree huggers.
Why effectively the same Coal gets burned at night regardless of whether your lights are on or off:
http://dunday.com/p/deception-behind-banning-light-bulbs.html#coal
As seen and referenced, it is just one of the many false arguments behind banning simple cheap incandescent light bulbs