Johannesburg – Eskom has called on South Africans to switch off power for Earth Hour on Saturday night. As part of the global community, South Africa will celebrate Earth Hour on Saturday from 8.30pm to 9.30pm local time.
As has been the case over the years, South Africans will join millions of people, businesses, and landmarks around the globe, who will set that hour aside to host events, switch off their non-essential lights, and make noise for climate change action, Eskom said in a statement.
"Earth Hour, which started in Sydney, Australia, in 2007, is organised by the World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature as a lights-off event to raise awareness about climate change. Currently, more than 162 countries and territories worldwide are part of this initiative, which engages a massive mainstream community on a broad range of environmental issues."
Eskom called on South Africans to switch off for Earth Hour and would celebrate this hour by using its power to showcase its contribution to South Africa’s journey in meeting sustainable development goals, the electricity parastatal said.
Sustainable development for Eskom included providing affordable energy and related services by integration and consideration of economic development, environmental quality, and social equity in business practices to continually improve performance and underpin development.
As such, Eskom strove for sustainable development principles and practices to be entrenched in all of its decisions, with the aim of ensuring long-term sustainability. Eskom would measure the savings from this hour, inform all South Africans of how much energy was saved in that time, and translate that to CO2 savings.
"Lastly, we would like to encourage people to take action beyond the one hour and to make energy efficiency and environmental conservation part of their daily lifestyles. We all know that we need to take immediate action to save our planet but many of us assume that these changes will place an added burden on our pockets and with rising prices on our daily living expenses, people don’t feel they can contribute.
"However, this is possible. People are encouraged to reduce their energy consumption every day by using electricity efficiently, switching off all non-essential lights and appliances," Eskom said.