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", said Eskom spokesperson, Khulu Phasiwe.
“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," Phasiwe explained.
"Eskom calls 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," said Phasiwe.
"Sustainable development for Eskom includes 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 strives for sustainable development principles and practices to be entrenched in all of its decisions, with the aim of ensuring long-term sustainability," Phasiwe said.
Phasiwe says that 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.
