British Columbians saved 136-megawatt hours of electricity and reduced the provincial electricity load by 1.95 per cent during Earth Hour Saturday night, March 23 - the equivalent of turning off more than 10 million 12.5-watt LED light bulbs.
Many communities across the province successfully improved their Earth Hour energy savings from the previous year. Comox and Courtenay saw the highest reduction at nearly 10 per cent. Sechelt came in at 4.9 per cent. BC Hydro did not provide any further breakdowns for other communities on the Sunshine Coast.
Earth Hour is an annual global event hosted by the World Wildlife Fund and supported by BC Hydro. This year marks the sixth year of BC Hydro's support of the event. The goal of Earth Hour is to encourage individuals to turn off unnecessary lights and electronics in an effort to conserve power and in doing so, demonstrate support for climate change reduction efforts.
This year, many BC Hydro account holders were able to track their electricity use by logging onto MyHydro - their on-line account - at www.bchydro.com/myhydro. They were able to see the hourly breakdown for their account and compare Earth Hour electricity use with their use on the Saturday prior to Earth Hour.
Power Smart tips help British Columbians make a difference in energy conservation through simple efforts year-round. Since 2007, BC Hydro's Power Smart programs have saved close to 4,300 gigawatt hours per year of electricity -enough to power 390,000 B.C. homes.
For more information on Earth Hour visit www.bchydro.com/earthhour and www.wwf.ca.
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