In view of global crises, conflicts and wars, the WWF is organizing the 2024 campaign under the motto "Your hour for the Earth!" This year, it is not only intended to be a sign of climate protection, but also one of mutual respect and democracy. With this day of action, the WWF is calling for a policy that promotes climate protection on a broader scale, provides financial support and is anchored in national budgets in the long term.
This has already happened to some extent at municipal level in Bonn. Exactly one year to the day before this year's Earth Hour, on March 23, 2023, the Bonn City Council adopted the Climate Plan as a roadmap for a climate-neutral and liveable city of Bonn. As a climate neutrality strategy, the plan defines goals and development paths for the period up to 2035. Many of the politically agreed mandates are now being translated into concrete projects and are gradually being brought to life in urban society.
Part of the Bonn Climate Plan's work program is municipal heat planning. It aims to answer the question of how Bonn can be supplied with climate-friendly heat in the future. The City of Bonn has recently become one of the first municipalities in NRW to start heat planning. Results are expected as early as the beginning of 2025.
Mayor invites everyone to take part in "Earth Hour"
Mayor Katja Dörner invites the citizens of Bonn to take part in the "Earth Hour" campaign. She emphasizes: "In Bonn, we have set ourselves the goal of becoming a climate-neutral city by 2035. We have already set many things in motion, but calculations from our Climate Plan show that we need to significantly reduce our energy consumption despite the expansion of renewable energies. Symbolic campaigns such as Earth Hour are therefore a good way of raising even more people's awareness of climate protection. After all, the necessary changes will only succeed if we take the entire urban society with us on this journey."
The City of Bonn is also pursuing this goal with various participatory formats. For example, a so-called "climate district" is to be opened in every Bonn municipal district in 2024. In this way, the city wants to create spaces in which civil society actors can work together on projects for a climate-neutral and liveable city and contribute their ideas. A central format of the planned climate districts - "future forums" in all four districts - has already been carried out in a similar form in the Bonn4Future participatory process, amongst others.
SWB, Bonn University and Deutsche Post DHL again join in
Once again, the city will be switching off the lights at town halls, cultural sites and other municipal buildings on the day of action. In addition, Stadtwerke Bonn will switch off the floodlights on numerous prominent buildings and monuments.
"Stadtwerke Bonn is also doing all it can to support the ambitious climate targets of the City of Bonn. As a municipal company, we are driving forward the energy and transport turnaround. With the expansion of the northern combined heat and power plant and district heating, as well as new vehicles and the conversion of the company depots, we are focusing on CO2 neutrality. Our plans for a new waste-to-energy plant also focus on the waste turnaround. In the future, we want to generate even more environmentally friendly energy in and for Bonn," emphasizes SWB Managing Director Marco Westphal.
The University of Bonn and the United Nations in Bonn are also participating again, as is the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection. Deutsche Post DHL has promised that the Post Tower will remain dark.
The following buildings will remain in the dark:
Old Town Hall, Bonn Minster, main university building, Kreuzbergkirche, Doppelkirche Schwarzrheindorf, Stiftskirche, Sterntor, Godesburg, Schumannhaus.
Background: Earth Hour campaign
The Earth Hour campaign began in 2007 in Sydney, Australia, and quickly grew into a global movement. One year later, millions of people in 35 countries switched off the lights for one hour to set an example for climate protection. In 2009, the first German cities to take part in the international campaign were Bonn, Berlin and Hamburg.
Millions of people and countless cities from 121 countries around the world joined in the last Earth Hour in 2023. In Germany, 579 cities and municipalities took part in last year’s Earth Hour campaign.
Further information can be found at: https://www.wwf.de/earth-hour (opens in a new tab)