Jakarta to turn lights off Saturday

The Jakarta Post | Fri, 02/27/2009 5:33 PM  

Jakarta will take part in a global effort to promote climate change mitigation by turning off the city lights for an hour on Saturday starting 8.30 p.m. 

Director General for Electricity and Energy Consumption J. Purwono said the event was endorsed by the World Wide Foundation (WWF) and a total of 1,000 cities from all across the globe would participate in the event. 

“We support this program. In Jakarta, WWF will cooperate with the local government,” Purwono said as quoted by Antara state news agency. 

WWF Indonesia program director for climate and energy Fitrian Ardiansya claimed that the event would safe a total of Rp 200 million of spending on electricity. 

“The main targets of this activism are the government, business players, communities and individuals,” Fitrian said. 

The event, which is called Earth Hour, starts in Sydney, Australia, in 2007 with about 2.2 million people turning their house lights off for an hour. A total of 50 million participated in the city last year, and also followed by 18,231 companies and 370 cities in 35 countries. (and)