Earth Hour results are in

Thousands of people across the province spent an hour in the dark Saturday to take part in Earth Hour.

According to BC Hydro, from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. across the province, 65 megawatt hours of electricity were saved and the provincial electricity load was reduced by one percent, the equivalent of turning off about 1.4 million lights.

In the Okanagan, Lumby residents did the best job turning out the lights, reducing their energy consumption by 4 per cent.

Coldstream was next at 2.6 per cent, followed by Enderby at 2.1 per cent, Sicamous at 2 per cent, and Vernon, Lake Country, and Salmon Arm at 1.7 per cent. Peachland, West Kelowna and Summerland all saw reductions of 1.3 per cent. 

FortisBC has not yet provided figures for Kelowna.

This year, province-wide there was a 1 per cent reduction in the energy load, that was down from 1.95 per cent last year.

Those results matched our poll results that show only 37 per cent of people took part, while 63 per cent chose to keep the lights on. 

Earth Hour is an annual global event hosted by the WWF that encourages individuals to turn off unnecessary lights and electronics to demonstrate support for climate change reduction efforts.

To see a full list of how communities across the province stacked up in terms of their energy reductions click here.