2009 Vancouver Earth Hour Recap

So the earth hour came and went by rather quickly. We live in a condo downtown and when we looked out of the window during earth hour, to be honest, I barely noticed any change…. Just as bright as I remember =).

According to BC Hydro - the province of BC had recorded a 1.1% power consumption reduction. This is unfortunately lower than last year, where 2% power consumption was reduced.

Some facts to share:

Vancouve recorded a power reduction of 1.3%, slightly above average
Pemberton recorded the highest power reduction - 4.6%
New Westminster and Richmond had the lowest power reduction - 0.1% and 0.3% respectively
Amount of energy saved: 72.67MWh, equivalent to powering 2,400 homes for an entire year

What are your thought of earth hour? There are a lot of (valid) criticism of this activity. The truth is this is more of a awareness campaign as supposed to an act of actually saving energy. This is because even though electricity used on the demand side (i.e. after the electricity meter) was decreased, the supply side was unchanged (i.e. before the meter: generation and transmission). To make it easier to understand - basically even if you have participated in earth hour and turned of the light and have reduced the energy consumption by 72.67MWh, the grid still produced just as much electricity. So where did the extra electricity go? You may not want to know but the electricity just got wasted, as there is no current storage facility for the Grid!!

Personally i think it’s a good event - but to make any practical use of it, we need to conserve energy all the time, and not just one hour out of the year!

LoLee Green

Can we shop our way to sustainability?