by frog
Any tadpoles out there in the first blush of an amorous amphibian liaison would be wise to book a date for Saturday night when you’ll have a great excuse to turn out the lights.
It’s Earth Hour and we’re all encouraged to kill the lights between 8.30 and 9.30 PM. The Parliament is doing it. The Green MPs are doing it at their homes (in fact Metiria Turei will be doing it with a bunch of people in Dunedin’s Octagon). And my pond will be even darker than normal thanks to the good people at WWF who say:
WWF’s Earth HourT 2009 will witness many of planet’s most important buildings and landmarks in nearly 3000 cities and towns going dark for one hour, including The Pyramids of Giza, The Eiffel Tower, The Acropolis and The Empire State Building.
At 8.30 pm on Saturday 28th March, forty-four cities, towns and regions in New Zealand, starting with The Chatham Islands, will be leading the world.
They will be joined by many of New Zealand’s iconic buildings and places, large and small, including the Sky Tower, the Beehive, the Octagon in Dunedin, and clock towers and civic buildings across the country.
Chris Howe, WWF-New Zealand’s Executive Director, emphasises the significance of the event globally. “Over a billion people in 3,000 towns and cities around the world will be speaking with one global voice, saying we care about the planet we live on, and we want action on climate change now.”
This is a feel good moment in New Zealand, around the world, and – attention tadpoles -perhaps at your pad if you play your cards right.
But what are the real world effects?…um not much as Keith Ng has laid out in no uncertain terms on another blog this week.
Go buy an energy efficient lightbulb and spend Earth Hour with the lights on watching TV – you’d come out ahead by a long, long way.
Meanwhile, the folks at LandCare have crunched some numbers themselves and come to a similar conclusion.
If everyone in New Zealand turned off their lights when not needed, how much energy could we save in a year? What carbon saving does this equate to?
Answer This is equivalent to 90 million kWh extra electricity per year, which has the potential to produce 15,000 tonnes CO2e in GHG emissions per year.
The impact on NZ’s Kyoto liability: 0.34%
However, they go on to consider:
How much energy is associated with standby and base load demand in New Zealand households? What emissions does this equate to?
Answer This is equivalent to 1.4 billion kWh electricity per year, which has the potential to produce 238,000 tonnes CO2e per year. This figure covers appliances in standby, heated towel rails, faulty refrigeration, minor loads, lights left on, and other miscellaneous.
The impact on Kyoto liability: 5.49%.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
So conclusion my slimy friends? Take Earth Hour for what it is – a chance to get more people thinking and talking and acting on climate change.
Tomorrow they turn out their lights, next week they might change their light bulbs and so on and so forth. Let the idea go forth and multiply (although you, tadpoles, should be very careful about what happens in the dark tomorrow night).
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Fri, March 27th, 2009
Tags: , earth hour, kyoto, WWF
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Does anyone know how much power will be wasted when at 9:30, all the lights come on? Let us not forget that to get the lights on, you need a sharp increase in current for that second.
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big party , lights on all overt the place like a City Council festival at my place fwwog,
girls, rednecks, drinks, and all that stuff,
but mainly lots of lights,
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# john-ston Says:
March 27th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
> Does anyone know how much power will be wasted when at 9:30, all the lights come on? Let us not forget that to get the lights on, you need a sharp increase in current for that second.
which leads to the question, are caretakers going to be running around commercial buildings turning all the non-essential lighting back on again at 9:30?
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What are the GHG emissions from all those candles and the odd kerosine lamp which will be used during that hour? Also how much GHG was created during the manufacture of all those torch batteries? Rechargeable batteries in torches may be the best option – particularly LED torches – but recharging them is probably only 50% efficient.
Trevor.
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Johnston: the increased power used to start a fluorescent light is equivalent to a few seconds of normal use (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=turn-fluorescent-lights-off-when-you-leave-room).
Trevor29: Its not about reducing GHG emissions for one hour. Its about getting people to think about permanently reducing GHG emissions (ie it is an educational event).
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You have a wordpress blog. There is a plugin that I am using to automagically celebrate earth day. You can get it here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/earth-hour/
Cheers
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samiuela wrote:
“It’s about getting people to think about permanently reducing GHG emissions”
…a process that I heartily endorse, and I am just providing a bit more to think about.
Trevor.
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I’m going to be turning all my lights ON for earthhour.
If enough people do the same as me we can counteract the earhthoiur power surge and save all those delcate electronic circuits that can’t handle power surges – computers, tvs, dvds etc
Then if I buy one more CF bulb, I can save the same as earthhour every day of the year, without even having to turn any lights off.
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Human Achievement Hour
http://cei.org/human-achievement-hour
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Photonz1: you should be plugging those sensitive electronic devices into a good surge protector.
Why not replace all your lights (where possible) with CF bulbs? Then you’ll save a whole lot more than if you just replace one bulb. At the same time, why not turn off all devices on standby, unplug unnecessary equipment, turn off lights (CF or not) when you leave the room, don’t heat unnecessary rooms, take shorter showers, wash your clothes in cold water, wear warm clothes in winter, and so on. None of these actions (other than replacing your light bulbs) will cost anything, and combined they will save a lot of GHG emissions, energy and money.
There are plenty of other things you can do which cost money (buy an energy efficient fridge, insulate your house better and so on); but you can still save a lot without having to spend anything.
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In the introduction of his book ‘Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning’ author George Monbiot says that he had “always assumed that candles are more environmentally friendly than electric lighting, for no better reason than that I like them and that they produce less light.” He was mistaken, as he tells us that in fact, “in terms of the light given off per watt of expended power, a candle is 71 times less efficient than an old-fashioned incandescent bulb, and 357 times worse than a compact fluorescent model.”
So unless you have beeswax candles, you could actually make the climate worse by switching off your energy-saving light bulbs and burning a few petroleum based wax candles. Interestingly, oil lamps are also on the wasteful list, as it turns out that by “choosing to burn a litre of kerosene in an engine, to drive a generator, to power a fluorescent lamp, can produce 250–450 times more useful light than burning the same amount in an oil lamp.”
http://www.transitiontowns.org.nz/node/1567
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Go for the traditional camp-fire. It uses renewable resources.
Trevor.
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From the “with friends like these, who needs enemies” file:
tinyurl.com/dyxtfk
“The happy couple did not plan their Christchurch wedding day to coincide with the lights-out environmental event. A week ago, when they realised the date clash, some of their 120 guests rang to say they could not make it because a wedding reception’s lights were not likely to be dimmed.”
Halfwit central in Christchurch, obviously…..
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On the other hand BP, the guests who don’t turn up will reduce the wedding costs somewhat. If I was the one paying, I wouldn’t be arguing with those who don’t turn up.
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I turned on all of my lights to compensate for my neighbour who turned his off to keep the carbon footprint the same.
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GW Denier, That nice Mr Key will be ever so grateful for your contribution to sustaining the government’s revenue stream.
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I would suggest that you don’t stop there GW Denier. Why not leave all your lights on (all incandescent ones , of course) 24*7? That is sure to prove a point! Although your bank balance may suffer
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Pix from Welli & around NZ going up on FB site:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=53818868155&ref=mf
and the national event site:
http://www.earthhour.org/home/
Looks like it was fun, wherever people were.
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Kevyn Says:
“March 29th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
GW Denier, That nice Mr Key will be ever so grateful for your contribution to sustaining the government’s revenue stream.”
don’t think so Kevyn,
these parties with lights on so full on you can see up a girls dress don’t help NAT Govt,
they help pay Corporate power company bosses,
but we get to look up girls dress , some of them girl wearing green knickers Kevyn,
worth the money Kev,
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Earth hour is only for an hour a year, we can save more energy and prevent global warming by building energy efficient homes, using energy efficient lighting and using solar and bio energy as alternative energy for daily use.
Clean Energy
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