TO promote energy efficiency and sustainable everyday practices that the public can adopt, especially in light of the Middle East fuel crisis, the Department of Energy (DOE), in partnership with SM Supermalls, launched the Oras Natin sa Efficiency (O.N.E.) initiative on May 21 at The Globe, Mall of Asia.
The practice simply requires that the participants turn off all unnecessary lighting and power usage for one hour every week, specifically Saturdays, from 8 to 9 p.m. Energy Secretary Sharon Garin said that this “one-hour challenge” can maximize the use of power, with a consistent weekly one-hour reduction of electricity, which can “take that same energy to give back to our communities every Saturday.” She said that one similar exercise conducted recently “reduced the country’s electricity demand by 145 megawatts in a single hour, the equivalent of powering roughly 1 million homes.”
According to Junlee Eusebio, vice president-mall operations of SM Supermalls, all of their 90 malls nationwide will follow a procedure similar to their Earth Hour program: lower by 50 percent the nonessential lighting that happens in common areas while ensuring the safety of personnel and customers. The mall administration will also encourage their tenants “to dim the lights or the signages so that energy consumption can be reduced.”
SM Supermalls would have conducted a pilot run of the one-hour energy reduction initiative by the time this article is published; the schedule was set on May 25. Then they will try the same program again the following Saturday evening. Eusebio said that cutting down 50 percent of nonessential lighting for one hour can save 6,000 kilowatts of electricity.
Secretary Garin expressed her hope that the O.N.E habit will soon become widespread all over the country. “A generation that unplugs but stays connected, a country that chooses its planet — that is the lifestyle we are building,” she said, “one Saturday at a time, one household at a time, and one switch at a time.”
