Raising awareness on energy saving through Earth Hour

Ben Ng Mar 14th, 2010

The Energy Division under the Prime Minister’s Office yesterday held an Earth Hour briefing for teachers and students in a bid to raise awareness on the importance of energy saving.
Supported by the Science, Technology and Environment Partnership Centre (STEP) under the Ministry of Education, the briefing also hoped to stress on the importance of energy-sustainability.

“As done in previous years, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) observes this day in hopes of seeing this as an opportunity to address the serious issue of global warming,” a representative speaker from the Energy Division said to participants that comprised mainly secondary school teachers, principals, and students.

On March 27, people across the globe will observe earth hour and switch off their lights for 60 minutes, from 8.30pm to 9.30pm, symbolising their commitment towards saving energy.

“Initiatives such as these are in line with the Division’s goals in raising public awareness of the importance of saving energy,” the speaker continued.

He said that saving energy is the most effective way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are widely believed to increase global warming.

“It is good to have an energy-saving mentality not just for special days such as today, but for every day,” he said.

With this, he said, it is very important for the teachers to educate students on energy affairs to instil a sense of energy saving during the early stages of a child’s education.

“It’s also a good way of reminding us of the importance of our natural non-renewable resources, such as oil and gas,” added the official.

Last year, 88 countries and 4,088 cities participated in Earth Hour 2009, 10 times more cities than Earth Hour 2008 had (2008 saw 400 cities participate).

Earth Hour is a global event organised by WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature, also known as World Wildlife Fund) and is held on the last Saturday of March annually, requesting households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and other electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change.

Earth hour was conceived by WWF and The Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, when 2.2 million residents of Sydney participated by turning off all non-essential lights. Following Sydney’s lead, many other cities around the world adopted the event in 2008.

Reports show that the United States topped the Earth Hour participation with an estimated 80,000,000 people with 318 cities and eight states participating.

The Philippines saw participation from 647 cities and towns or over 15 million Filipinos were estimated to have joined in the hour-long lights-off from 8.30 to 9.30 PM local time. This was followed by Greece with 484 cities and towns participating, and Australia with 309.

Latest by Ben Ng:

number of view: 305