On Earth Hour, Lenten travel, and Pinoys in Toronto

On Earth Hour, Lenten travel, and Pinoys in Toronto
March 26, 2024 | 12:02 am

My Cup Of Liberty
By Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr.
https://www.bworldonline.com/opinion/2024/03/26/584005/on-earth-hour-lenten-travel-and-pinoys-in-toronto/

As it is Holy Week, I will briefly cover four light topics to adjust to slow/non-work mode of most people.

‘EARTH HOUR’ 2024

Last Saturday evening saw the annual celebration of “Earth Hour” where people shut off their lights for an hour. This is practiced in many cities around the world to help “save the planet.” How effectively was it done in the Philippines? I checked the data in the daily operations report of the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP). The decline in electricity use between 8:30-9:30 p.m. was mainly because people were going to sleep, which one deduces since the electricity use did not increase after 9:30 p.m. In the Luzon to Visayas to Mindanao grids (see Table 1).

That day, March 23, the electricity generation mix was: coal 67.5%, natural gas 13.3%, geothermal 9.3%, hydro 4.8%, solar + wind + biomass 4.3% combined.

So, it was a double dud for the Earth Hour campaign. First, people slowly turned off their lights to sleep not to celebrate darkness, and, second, the energy source that Earth Hour campaigners demonize, coal, provided two-thirds (68%) of the total power generation while their beloved energy sources provided less than 5% of the total. The Earth Hour narrative is a juvenile concern that businesses and the public generally ignore....

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