Earth Hour is a crazy idea that environmentalists have not thought through. How can turning off your lights for an hour whilst still have your sound system, your air-conditioner, your dishwasher, your computer etc devouring electricity?
Earth Hour is nothing but an ineffective feel-good event.
It leads us to believe that we’re doing something for the climate while distracting us from the real problems and solutions.
Although the organisers are careful to not promise anything, many participants clearly think that switching off their lights will help tackle global warming by cutting CO2. But we cut only a little bit.
Earth Hour is about switching off the lights, not your computer, your internet, your heater or cooler or dishwasher or anything else that would be inconvenient. So you’re really switching off only a tiny part of your emissions.
If all the turned-off lights were turned into emission reductions they would not amount to much.
It would likely be the equivalent of China halting its CO2 emissions for less than four minutes.
But even this is unrealistic because in the real world power plants keep running to accommodate usage from all other uses and the potential surge after the hour ends. The power sector thinks the net reduction is close to zero.
And even this forgets that almost all participants light candles instead. But candles are almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light bulbs, and more than 300 times less efficient than fluorescent lights.
Light one candle and it will emit as much CO2 as you were saving. Light a bunch of candles and you’ll have emitted much more CO2. So Earth Hour may actually increase CO2 emissions.
But there is something much more disturbing about this celebration of darkness.
While more than a billion people across the globe make a symbol of forgoing non-essential electrical power for one hour a year, another 1.3 billion people across the developing world will continue to live without electricity as they do every other night of the year.
Almost three billion people still burn dung, twigs and other traditional fuels indoors to cook and keep warm. These fuels give off noxious fumes that kill an estimated 3.5 million people each year, mostly women and children.
It was the advent of widespread electrical power that freed us from some of these harmful practices that still affect large parts of the developing world. Electric stoves and heaters have ended the scourge of indoor air pollution.
It goes without saying that electric power has brought near innumerable benefits to mankind
So instead of pretending that a minuscule reduction of electricity usage for an hour in rich countries will fix the climate, why don’t we promote better solutions that will actually reduce emissions while extending the gains of modern energy to all people across the globe?
Our climate policies during the past 20 years have managed to cut very little CO2. Just like Earth Hour, they reflect an inefficient and misguided preference for feeling good over doing good.
In 2012, solar and wind power was subsidised by $60 billion. For all this extra money we spent on energy, we generated just 0.3 per cent of global energy from wind and 0.04 per cent from solar. The emission savings from that translate into climate benefits of just over $1bn. Ninety-seven cents of every dollar invested was wasted.
This is relevant not only for people in developing countries who are still yearning for access to electricity. With ever stronger green goals and consequent rising energy prices, 17 per cent of British households are energy poor.
In Germany, household electricity prices have increased by 80 per cent since 2000 and their subsidies are at a high of $33bn a year. About seven million households now live in energy poverty.
Today’s renewable technologies remain expensive and unreliable, and they are far from making a breakthrough.
Even with optimistic assumptions, the International Energy Agency estimates that by 2035, we will produce just 2.4 per cent of our energy from wind and under 1 per cent from solar.
