City places 7th in Earth Hour Challenge

The City and residents of Chestermere managed to reduce their electrical consumption by 3.5 per cent for Earth Hour March 25.
“I think there was a lot of positive response from the community,” said Communications Advisor Katie Lamanna, “and we really want to keep that momentum going next year.”
The reduction was enough to earn the city seventh place out of 29 Alberta municipalities that took part in the FortisAlberta Earth Hour Challenge.
This was the first-time Chestermere has taken part in the competition and it was one of the larger communities to make it in the top ten of the challenge.
The decision to take part in the Earth Hour challenge came as part of the city’s strategic plan to be involved with environmentally friendly or green initiatives.
“The city is already participating in a lot of green initiatives like bee city,” said Lamanna.
“When I found out about all the green initiatives that the city was already participating in and then the FortisAlberta Earth Hour Challenge, I just thought it was a great initiative to participate in,” she said.
To calculate the amount of energy saved during Earth Hour, FortisAlberta measured the amount of consumption in Chestermere a week before Earth Hour on March 18 between 8:30 – 9:30 p.m. and then again during the same time period for Earth Hour March 25 to determine the reduction.
The city encouraged all residents to do what they could to reduce their power consumption for that hour.
For their part, the city shut of all non-critical lighting at city hall, the public works yard, John Peake Park, and Anniversary Park.
“We turned off all the non-essential lighting inside and outside,” said City of Chestermere Corporate Properties Supervisor Steve Kemp.
This green change was as easy as adjusting timers and flipping off light switches and breakers.
While they are happy with the results, they want to crack the top three next year and win one of the grants to be used to implement a green change in the city.
“Would love to place higher than seventh,” said Lamanna, “ideally in the top three to win the grant.”
Should they successfully win a grant next year, the city would like to improve the efficiency of some of the lighting fixtures.
“Some of those ways that we’re looking to do that would be to change the exterior lights on city hall,” said Kemp, “change the fixtures to LEDs.”
They would also like to install motion and occupancy sensors to the indoor lights at public works.