Chile Looses Tie to Fight Global Warming

While the northern hemisphere is turning up the heaters, South America is passing by the hottest summer times of the year. And with the rising temperatures of the past years -in Argentina it got to 44 degrees Celsius this month-, the use of air conditioning has spread rapidly over the countries. In Chile, for example, over 215000 equipments were imported from 1996 to 2006. So in order to save some of the enormous amounts of energy used to cool air in the offices, the executive director of the Chilean Energy Efficiency Program (PPEE), Nicola Borregaard, has urged city employees to loose jackets and ties to work. The proposal is named “Summer without tie”, and even though it’s a public initiative, she expects every company will follow up. “We hope directors from all working activities join this proposal, so that this can become a habit for every Chilean worker”, she said. Chile is a conservative country where men usually dress formally for work. According to the PPEE, air conditioning can represent an office’s 30 to 60% amount of the total energy consume. With this program, the organism hopes to save 17,2 to 34,4 GWh energy, if every one of the 215.000 equipments imported in the past ten years could be switched off just 2 hours every day, for 40 days.
The officials who promoted this idea inspired themselves in the Japanese model...
Via linton from Hugg.com

“In 2005, this country set up new rules for air conditioning usage and summer dressing codes and could accomplish savings close to 210.000.000 KWh energy and 460 thousand tons of CO2 emissions per season”, said Bruno Philippi, Sofofa’s president (a gremial organization).
As additional measurements, officials aimed employers to adjust the equipments to a minimum of 26 degrees Celsius and to perform adequate maintenance, as the cleaning of the filters can save up to 5% of the energy used. They also recommended that the air conditioning thermostat be installed as far as possible from possible heat sources. ::El Mostrador Original News ::Yahoo News

Photo by ZoofyTheJi, from sxc.hu