Government's call for Islanders to turn off their lights for just one hour on Saturday night to reduce carbon emissions has fallen on deaf ears, The Royal Gazette can reveal.

The initiative was to observe 'Earth Hour' — a global movement to fight climate change. Government and environmental groups asked residents to shut off their lights from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Earth Hour is a World Wildlife Fund initiative that began last year in Sydney, Australia, when more than two million people and thousands of businesses turned out their lights, reducing the city's power consumption by more than ten percent in one hour — the equivalent of taking 48,000 cars off the road.

This year, more than 25 cities around the world pledged their participation, including Chicago, Atlanta, Phoenix, San Francisco, Toronto, Copenhagen, Melbourne, Brisbane and Tel Aviv.

Millions of people in community groups, local businesses and on an individual basis also took part.According to a Belco spokesperson last night, there was no significant change in terms of power usage for a typical Saturday night at the end of March.

The spokesperson revealed: "Following are results from (Saturday) night, the megawatt (MW) figure is typical for a mild night at end of March with not much reason to turn on heat or AC, and virtually on target with the load that we would have expected on a normal Saturday night this time of year.

"The system operators recorded the load at 15 minute intervals starting at 7.45 p.m. and ending at 9.45 p.m.

"... there was no significant change, in fact there was a 1MW increase between 7.45 p.m. and 8 p.m.

Also there was no significant increase in load around 9 p.m., in fact the load decreased gradually after 9 p.m. "(The gradual decrease) is typical of our load profile for this time of night, as load always drops with bed times starting."

Last week, Minister of Works and Engineering Derrick Burgess joined Energy Minister Terry Lister and Greenrock in urging Bermuda to participate in Earth Hour.

Mr. Burgess said the simple act of turning off the lights for one hour would "deliver a powerful message about the need for action on global warming."

However, last night, when The Royal Gazette contacted Mr. Burgess to reveal Belco's power usage data from Saturday night, he reacted: "Even though Belco's results shows there was no usage decrease, this doesn't discourage us from continuing this Earth Hour initiative, which appears to be in its second year since its founding in Australia.

"I think this will grow world-wide and I think it's something we will continue. (Next time) we probably need to put some more promotion and awareness into (the initiative) to better educate the public on the positive effects behind Earth Hour."

Asked if he thought if Earth Hour had been better publicised more people would have participated, he added that initiatives such as Earth Hour usually take time to catch on.

"I think this will grow and I think Bermuda, like the rest of the world, will catch on and eventually we will see the decrease in energy usage."

Environmental group Greenrock, which lead the Earth Hour campaign in Bermuda believes this year's energy usage results will serve as a bench mark to compare to next year's observance, which it hopes will have more funding and awareness behind it.

Last night, Andrew Vaucrosson, President of Greenrock, stated: "Greenrock had asked Belco to monitor the time period for which Earth Hour would take place on March 29th for two reasons: one, is to see what effect we could accomplish this year.

"And two, to establish a benchmark that we can compare ourselves next year.

"On (Sunday), Greenrock received the power loads for Bermuda from 7.45 p.m. to 9.45 p.m., and it would appear there was no significant drop in usage.

"We were not surprised by this considering how little time Bermuda had to prepare for this event and to garner support from both the public and private sectors, and how little funds were available to promote this event effectively."

Worldwide, he said Earth Hour was a success and has achieved mass participation