[Pil-pc-oceania] Earth Hour Sydney 31 March

[Graeme George - Earthcare Permaculture]

Graeme

Having received several emails  about this event, I joined in  by 
turning off all my lights for an hour on the Saturday night, without 
much inconvenience. I hoped that lots of others would have done this too 
as a demonstration that we can be less dependent on reticulated power if 
we have to be. The Sunday night news in Victoria had quite a story on 
the event in Sydney with shots of diners eating at restaurants by 
candlelight, etc, and claims that a huge amount of CO2 was saved by 
turning all the lights off.

Russ' post includes the quote

> In the city centre alone energy consumption fell 10.2 per cent between
> 7.30pm and 8.30pm, saving 24.86 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being 
> released
> into the air. 
 
I didn't hear any mention of  the power stations turning any of their 
generators off for the hour. I didn't think that steam driven turbines 
could be shut down for such short periods, so I presume they went on 
burning coal while everyone enjoyed the hour without electric lighting. 
It seems quite probable that, with all the candles and gas lamps burning 
as well as the boilers going full steam, we may have actually generated 
more CO2 than normal.

Another quote says

> The electricity saved would be enough to power more than 200,000 standard
> televisions for the hour and equates to a reduction of 24.86 tonnes of 
> CO2.
> "This is the equivalent of 48,613 cars off the road for the hour," the
> spokesman said. 
I wonder where this electricity is that was "saved" ? Is there a huge 
bank of batteries somewhere that we haven't been told about?

We need to be clear about what the objective of this exercise was. As an 
example of what potential there is to make changes it was unexpectedly 
successful. If the objective was to save an hour's worth of greenhouse 
gases it had no hope of succeeding and could be considered a grand hoax.

Graeme George
Earthcare Permaculture
35 Deering Ave, Healesville, Vic, 3777