I happened to be up in Tahoe this weekend and missed all the action of earth hour. What I did see was that countries outside of the US took earth hour as a celebration and cities in the US took it as a burden. It seemed that there was multiple gatherings of thousands of people at the Colosseum in Rome, Taipai 101, Effile Tower and many other places, but in the USA we didn’t seem to have the same sense of pride for this great event.

A little research of US energy reduction verified my impression that the US didn’t take it as seriously. according to Rachel Gerds “Participation in Saturday’s Earth Hour, which ran from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., resulted in a 1 percent drop in the Chicago area’s energy use,” this is a little surprising to all because last year Chicago had a 7 percent reduction in energy use.

Las Vegas had the same story. Adam Grant, a spokesman for the utility’s parent company, NV Energy stated “Energy consumption valleywide dropped roughly 3 percent below Nevada Power Co.’s typical Saturday evening load” Adam also spoke about how last years energy consumption reduction was greater last year.

Guess the sweet 16 does have some serious influence over our lives.

Even though we didn’t get the energy savings compared to past years I feel the awareness factor is the true success of this project. I am excited to see what happens next year.

–The EBS Team