This Saturday is Earth Hour. For the fourth year the World Wildlife Fund is leading a campaign asking households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and other electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness for the need to take action on climate change. This year, Earth Hour is expected to be the biggest one yet, with an expected 1 billion participants from around the world. If participation numbers are any indication, this campaign has been a runaway success. However, the hour-long gesture of turning off your lights is the easy part. The real challenge with electricity generated GHGs is the other 364 days and 23 hours of the year.

Our federal government hasn’t shown much leadership when it comes to climate change. So that means the provincial and local levels of government have to step up to the plate. In Ontario, we have our work cut out for us. We’re the most populous province and the second highest producer of GHGs in Canada after Alberta.  Electricity is one area where we have opportunity to make significant GHG reductions. Unlike BC, which produces a significant majority of electricity from hydro (around 90%), Ontario is producing about 20% of its energy through coal-fired power plants, about 8% through natural gas-fired power plants (set to rise as we phase-out coal) and over 50% through nuclear power plants. The remainder is mainly from hydro with a tiny percentage from small scale renewables.

When it comes to electricity, there are 2 sides of the GHG reduction equation that need to be considered – production and consumption. And the Green Energy Act, still less than a year old, is how our provincial government is empowering (and in some cases coercing) us to reduce GHGs that come from the electricity sector.

On the production side there are now major incentives for small scale renewable energy production and that is opening up the opportunities for a whole range of community based renewable energy projects. The feed-in tariff means that if you produce small scale renewable energy (less than a 10 kilowatts) and feed it into the grid you are guaranteed a set price for the power you produce. There are also feed-in tariffs for larger projects (but rates aren’t as lucrative). The Green Energy Act also made the process of setting up renewable energy projects more streamlined and consistent throughout the province. The early results are promising. Small businesses are starting up and looking for creative ways to use the feed-in tariff, like leasing rooftops from residents for solar installations. Plus municipalities are now looking at how to get into renewable energy production. The result could be more secure funding for municipal programs in addition to the obvious environmental benefits.

On the consumption side, the Green Energy Act, is promising to create a “culture of conservation.” The biggest change most of us will see is time-of-use pricing on our electricity bills. Basically, we now get charged different rates depending on the time of day we use electricity. This is one of the best cases I’ve seen of community-based social marketing in action. The province did the groundwork of understanding the psychology around the barriers and benefits people perceive related to conserving energy. And then the local energy distribution companies are delivering the program, relying mainly on the incentive of saving money to get people to shift the time they use electricity. They are also offering tools, like smart meters, to help understand energy use. It is a significantly different program than the information heavy, brochure driven campaigns of the past and I expect that it will have much better results.

So as Earth Hour comes and goes this year, it looks like Ontario has done quite a bit over the last year to complement the hour of darkness. The province has set out a framework for green energy production and energy conservation that individuals and communities are starting to embrace. It means that the energy I use is gradually going to become greener and that I now think more about when during the day I use energy.  That’s not a bad start.