Millions
globally signalled a new awareness of climate
change by turning off their lights for an
hour last Saturday night. World landmarks
– the Sydney Opera House, San Francisco's
Golden Gate Bridge, Rome's Colosseum and
Bangkok's Wat Arun Rajawarahrahm Pagoda
disappeared into the night sky.
People liberated from
television screens and other electronic
distractions congregated in parks, at community
festivities or often, simply appreciated
a more star-spangled sky. At a host of Earth
Hour concerts, like the one featuring Nelly
Furtado in Toronto, it was the acoustic,
not the electric, guitar taking centre stage.
Officially, 26 major
cities on six continents participated with
major municipal and community initiatives
in WWF's Earth Hour, with energy savings
and avoided emissions still being toted
up. Some 370 cities and towns signed up
to support the event, but around the world
millions of others informally voted with
their switch fingers for more concerted
action on climate change.
One community, however,
did it differently. Visoqo Village in Fiji
celebrated Earth Hour by turning their light
switches on . . . for the first time. In
the previous week, residents had busied
themselves unpacking solar panels and installing
them to provide the village's first and
wholly renewable energy based electricity
supply.
Supplying electricity
to Visoqo is a pilot project in finding
sustainable development solutions for some
of the poorest areas in Macuata Province
on Vanua Levu, Fiji's second largest island.
Much of the initiative and support for the
project comes from the Macuata Soqosoqo
ni Vakamarama (Macuata Women’s Association)
"We are not a fossil fuel producing
nation," said Sereana Cokanasiga, fundraiser
for the association . "The burden of
keeping up with fuel costs is usually expressed
unfortunately in unsustainable natural resource
exploitation, a contributing factor to poverty.
”What the Macuata Soqosoqo ni Vakamarama
is trying to emphasize is that we need to
encourage and invest more in renewable energy,
it is non polluting and is far more beneficial
to rural communities in the long run.”
“We also thought that
the launch of the solar project in Visoqo
this week should tie in to Earth Hour as
part of our small contribution to the global
effort for Climate Change Awareness. An
effective way to reduce carbon emissions
is to promote renewable energy, which is
essentially what this project is about and
what our association supports.”
WWF launched Earth Hour
in one city – Sydney, Australia – in 2007.
The city really got behind it. This year
Sydneysiders again got behind Earth Hour,
but this time they had company. An awful
lot of company.
"Earth Hour is
WWF’s global event started to encourage
businesses, communities and individuals
to take the simple steps needed to cut their
emissions on an ongoing basis," said
Andy Ridley, the man who came up with the
idea and now the International Director
of WWF’s Earth Hour.
"It is about simple
changes that will collectively make a difference
– from businesses turning off their lights
when their offices are empty, to households
turning off appliances rather than leaving
them on standby.
"By Earth Hour
2009, on March 28 we expect more people
will have incorporated simple energy efficient
solutions into their homes and workplace.
It’s important we keep the momentum going
for a greener and sustainable future."
+ More
Cars should plug-in
to a new future: WWF
02 Apr 2008 - Gland,
Switzerland / Brussels, Belgium: Dramatically
expanded use of plug-in electric and hybrid
vehicles would be a way to a transport future
that doesn't risk climate catastrophe, a
major new WWF analysis has found.
Such a move would also
reduce the risk of conflict over less oil
more and more concentrated in relatively
unstable areas of the world.
Plugged In: The End
of the Oil Age considers the future of a
transport sector now 95 per cent dependent
on liquid hydrocarbon fuels and examines
the impacts and practicalities of electric,
coal-to-liquid, gas-to-liquid, natural gas
and hydrogen powered transport for the future
It finds that vehicles
running solely or partly on grid-connected
electricity are more efficient and less
greenhouse gas intensive than all alternatives,
even with most power now being generated
using fossil fuels.
The report also finds that cleaner power
generation and more use of renewable fuels
in power generation will make it certain
that the comparative efficiency and pollution
advantages of plug-in transport will improve
into the future, while the future of liquid
fuels is one of increasing resort to dirtier
sources that will take more energy to turn
into fuels.
“We should all be relying
more on walking and biking, on buses and
trains, to get to where we need to go. But
cars will inevitably remain a major part
of the transport equation," said James
Leape, Director General of WWF International.
"The cars of the
future must be much more efficient -- smaller,
lighter, more aerodynamic -- and they should,
increasingly, be powered by electricity,”
As oil becomes more
difficult to access, techniques to create
liquid fuels from coal are now being vigorously
pursued in the US, China, India, Australia
and South Africa.
“Coal-to-liquid fuels
are costly, energy intensive and extremely
polluting, and have previously only been
used on any significant scale in countries
facing a state of emergency,” said report
author Dr Gary Kendall.
Other alternatives to
traditional oil extraction include exploitation
of oil sands, which generates three times
the emissions of petroleum processing and
causes devastation to the local environment.
Natural gas suffers from similar looming
supply uncertainties to oil and makes its
greatest beneficial climate impact by displacing
coal in heat and power generation.
The report also finds
that the electric vehicles can be three
times more efficient than hydrogen-fuelled
vehicles. More importantly perhaps, electric
vehicles can be widely introduced using
existing technologies and distribution infrastructure.
“Automotive transport
is ripe for transformation,” said Dr Kendall.
“We need to accelerate the commercialisation
of vehicles with diversified primary energy
sources, high efficiency and compatibility
with a sustainable, renewable energy future.
The electrification of automotive transport
offers a promising way to achieve this objective.”
To do so, the report
recommends dismantling market barriers to
superior technologies and removing a host
of hidden and overt subsidies to liquid
fuel use. Vehicles should be subject to
similar energy labelling and efficiency
improvement requirements as other energy-consuming
appliances. Liquid-based measures of fuel
economy (e.g. litres per 100km or miles
per gallon) and CO2 emissions targets should
be replaced with technology-neutral indicators
of energy consumed per kilometre.
“We cannot depend upon
today’s dominant transport solution providers
to drive the shift away from liquid hydrocarbon
fuels,” Dr Kendall said. “Other business
sectors – such as power utilities for instance
– will come to the fore in recognizing the
business opportunities of grid-connected
transport.
“But ultimately, leadership
on moving to the best transport fuel mix
will need to come from governments."
Contacts on this story listed on media release
