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Earth Hour saves SA 410MW

Admire Moyo
By Admire Moyo, ITWeb's news editor.
Johannesburg, 26 Mar 2018
UN secretary-general Ant'onio Guterres urged people around the world to turn out the lights.
UN secretary-general Ant'onio Guterres urged people around the world to turn out the lights.

South Africans joined the rest of the world when they switched off their lights for Earth Hour from 20:30 to 21:30 on Saturday night, together saving 410MW.

This is according to power utility Eskom.

Earth Hour is a global call for the protection of the planet and for people to take a stand against climate change. The movement is led by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

It started in Australia in 2007 and this year it was observed by millions of supporters in 187 countries.

This year's event stressed the link between climate change and biodiversity loss, as thousands of plant and animal species are threatened with extinction as a result of increasing temperatures.

Each year in March, South Africans join millions of people around the globe and use their collective voice to inspire, motivate and lead the charge on their hopes, dreams and concerns about the planet.

Eskom encourages people to take action beyond this one hour and to make energy-efficiency and environmental conservation part of their daily lifestyles, the power utility says.

This year, WWF South Africa focused #EarthHourZA on a national call for a renewable energy future through a petition targeted at the energy utility.

"We asked South Africans to sign, telling Eskom to lead the country into a greener, more equitable energy future to help the country create new, cleaner jobs and meet its international obligations to the global Paris Agreement on climate change," the organisation says.

Since August 2016, Eskom has been dragging its feet to sign any further independent power producer contracts within the country's renewable energy programme.

The contracts were supposed to be concluded this month but were blocked at the 11th hour when trade union National Union of Metalworkers of SA and civic group Transform RSA were granted an urgent court interdict at the North Gauteng High Court.

According to WWF, over 13 000 South Africans signed the petition, giving wings to the call for a clean, green future.

WWF South Africa says it will present the petition to Eskom to "demonstrate that a large number of South Africans support renewable energy and are calling on the utility to stop putting the brakes on these energy sources".

UN secretary-general Ant'onio Guterres urged people around the world to "turn out the lights and turn up the pressure" for a healthy planet.

"Climate change is moving much faster than we are. Its alarming impacts are upon us; resources and ecosystems across the world are under assault. Earth Hour is an opportunity to show our resolve to change," he said. "Protecting the environment is preserving life itself."

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