Shortened TV Broadcast in Japan Contributes to Cutting CO2 Emissions

As a special one-day environmental event, Japan's public broadcaster, Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), shortened the airtime of its educational TV channel on December 29, 2008, to reduce its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and save electricity.

The shorter airtime was instituted to remind both the broadcaster and viewers that daily broadcasting consumes a large quantity of electricity and results in a considerable amount of CO2 emissions. NHK expects such an event will promote efforts in energy saving and CO2 reduction.

The educational TV channel normally broadcasts from 5:00 a.m. to 2:50 a.m. the following day. On that day, however, the channel aired programs for only nine hours, from 12:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., shortening the broadcast by 12 hours and 50 minutes. While broadcasting was suspended, NHK's approximately 3,100 analog transmitting stations across the nation stopped sending TV signals, which resulted in saving about 17,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, or a reduction of some 9.4 tons of CO2 emissions, compared to a regular broadcasting day.

Under its Voluntary Action Plan on the Environment, NHK has been working actively toward curbing its own CO2 emissions and has organized TV programs and events on global environmental issues. As the closing event of the year-long "NHK Eco 2008: Save the Future" campaign, the TV station set the day as "a day to think about the global environment," which featured special environmental programs on its general and educational channels, besides shortening the educational channel's broadcasting hours.

Japan Broadcasting Cooperation official website
http://www.nhk.or.jp/pr/koho-e.htm

Posted: 2009/04/23 06:00:15 AM