At noon on Friday, June 19, 2015, SUNY New Paltz is dedicating one workday hour to turn off the lights in day-lit spaces to demonstrate the availability of daylight.  Do you work by a window?  Are your lights on even when your office space is getting enough daylight?  Consider… that on sunny days (and perhaps even cloudy days), you don’t need the lights on in your office space because natural daylight is enough!

Most offices have their lights on even when they are not needed. Spaces near exterior walls often receive enough daylight to work by, without the aid of electric lighting, but most often we leave the lights on anyway. This is a critical issue because the times when daylight is most available (workday afternoons) coincides with peak demand – the time when our society demands the most energy from the grid. This peak energy is the most expensive energy, and typically the dirtiest and most harmful to our global climate because the oldest, least efficient plants are brought online to meet this need.

#daylighthour #npsocial #npgreen