For the past five years, the City of Thunder Bay has helped to reduce energy consumption by simply turning off its lights.
The International annual Earth Hour event aimed at bringing awareness to Climate Change is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. on Saturday. The purpose of the event is to show lighting in homes and workplaces don’t have to be on all the time. To help illustrate this point, the City of Thunder Bay plans to shut off all the lights at City Hall. The city is also hosting a moonlight walk at Centennial Park during Earth Hour.
Charles Campbell, chair of Earth Wise Energy Group, said the act of turning off the lights is more symbolic to what people can to do reduce energy consumption.
"It’s about awareness," Campbell said. "You don’t have to have your lights on 24/7. Whether you adopt (Earth Hour) because of global warming or saving money, I think it helps."
Campbell said seven Northwest communities made proclamations to turn off their lights on Earth Hour.
The number of communities doesn’t reflect the number of individuals participating he added. The number of pledges for those participating is more than 130,000 on the World Wildlife Foundation website.
The sun traditionally sets late in Thunder Bay and Campbell said this poses a problem.
"Earth Hour happens when we still got light," he said. "It is a little hard to reduce energy use in Northern Ontario when people aren’t really using a lot of energy."
Campbell said although energy reduction is happening, especially in places such as Toronto, it is more about getting the community aware and participating.
