Planetsave

Remember the Planet Relief day Live Earth had set up with the BBC? They wanted a mass electricity switch off. Theoretically, everyone would take place in shutting of their lights and appliances and then Live Earth would measure the amount of energy saved. It was a grand attempt at awareness. Not to mention how cool it would look to see cities completely void of light. Sound dramatic and well terribly unpredictable? The national grid wet their pants. Planet Relief day got canceled. Read an excerpt from the BBC article:

The National Grid was nervous over the idea, advising against Live Earth’s switch off plan and negotiating for a year with the BBC on an alternative for Planet Relief.

Their reasoning was that the unpredictability of demand during such an event could mean some people losing their electricity supply and even raise the danger of emitting more carbon dioxide rather than less. While a sudden disappearance of demand is an unusual thing for the National Grid, its engineers know a lot about surges.

“Saying we want to switch off everything now is not going to be sustainable and is very, very unpredictable. You would create far more carbon [emission] than what you would actually save.”

Instead, for the ill-starred Planet Relief, the compromise solution, after a year of negotiation, was that viewers would be asked to conserve energy in the 24 hours before the programme and the National Grid would provide an up-to-date analysis of how much in emissions had been avoided.

But for the moment the idea of a dramatic switch-off is, well, switched off.