Yesterday was National Energy Saving Day. Did you know? I didn't. If I had known I would have told you about it. It was supposed to be a day of energy saving, asking people to switch off electrical devices they did not need over a period of 24 hours, with the National Grid monitoring consumption. In the event, they found that our national energy consumption for the day was pretty much exactly what you'd expect for the time of year. So why was it such an abject failure?I believe the clue is in the first three sentences of this blog post. I didn't know about it, and I bet most of you didn't either. If a paid-up environmental blogger could fail to notice that a national energy saving day was happening, then someone somewhere stuffed up the publicity very badly indeed.
According a BBC news story about it:
The E-Day concept started life as Planet Relief, an awareness-raising BBC TV programme with a significant comedy element.
But in September the BBC decided to pull the project, saying viewers preferred factual or documentary programmes about climate change.
Now that sounds like a good idea to me: a sort of Comic Relief for the planet. Instead we've had a damp squib. Apparently there is going to be another one next year. I hope it's better publicised than this one, or it will be a huge waste of energy.
8 comments:
I found out at lunchtime yesterday, when the day was nearly done. When I wrote something similar to this post in a forum, only one of 20 or so respondents had heard of it either. Useless!
Suddenly switching off appliances for one day only is only a gimmick though, and not a helpful one at that. It's tricky for the power station to manage, because they have to keep everything ticking over and ready for instant action and it's hard on the machinery when it all kicks in again.
Whoever had the bright idea would do far better to discuss the matter with people who run power stations and find out how a public awareness event could be more useful.
I didn't know about this either, I wish I had.
I'm a great reader of your journal, you are an inspiration to many
I was speechless when I read that article on BBC News. National Energy Day! What National Energy Day?
I'm a bit sceptical as well. Surely anyone who is actually going to turn off their appliances is already doing it by now? We're heard so much about turning things off.
I reckon people who can't be bothered to do so will need to be reached in other ways.
I did know about it, and blogged it, about a week ago. How much effect i had though i don't know, as i already turn most stuff off at the plug (the computers and fridge/freezer stay on all the time though).
it was a bit disappointing, it should have been much better advertised. oh well.
keth
xx
When I hear about things like this not getting publicity and failing because of no publicity, it triggers my "conspiracy radar." Now they can say, "We held an Energy Savings Day and no one came." Or "It didn't save any energy." Then they don't have to do anything about energy issues because, obviously, nobody cares.
Thanks, now I know why they were giving away CFL bulbs at work on Thursday :)
Hi Mel - I too hadn't seen any mention of this and at the moment I'm pretty much heads down in researching stuff for my Zero Waste project, so I would have expected to have picked it up along the way. Thanks for alerting and kicking off the discussion.
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