The Earth Hour City Challenge (EHCC) is an initiative designed by WWF to mobilize action and support from cities in the global transition towards a climate friendly, one-planet future, and to stimulate the development and dissemination of best practices for climate mitigation and adaptation. It is run as a recurrent and increasingly global challenge for cities to present ambitious, holistic, inspiring and credible plans for low carbon development and for dramatically increasing the use of sustainable and efficient renewable energy solutions in the next few decades.
 
WWF’s Earth Hour City Challenge 2016 saw participation from 125 cities representing 21 countries. Cities were evaluated on their level of ambition and innovation in developing climate-smart solutions that advance sustainable development under local circumstances.
 
National winners included Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Boulder, USA; Chiangrai, Thailand; Edmonton, Canada; Hue City, Vietnam; Jakarta, Indonesia; Lappeenranta, Finland; Montería, Colombia; Murcia, Spain; Petaling Jaya, Malaysia; Quito, Ecuador; Rajkot, India; Santa Rosa, Philippines; Shenzhen, China; City of Singapore, Singapore; Tshwane, South Africa and Umeå, Sweden.
 
Paris now joins the ranks of previous global Earth Hour City Challenge winners such as Cape Town and Seoul, all of whom have shown extraordinary leadership in developing innovative solutions for tackling climate change and reducing the ecological footprint of urban lifestyles.  

Since 2007, WWF’s Earth Hour has been the force behind numerous environmental outcomes including helping to drive legislative changes, promoting individual actions to protect forests, oceans and wildlife, encouraging sustainable behaviour and lifestyles, and helping spark global awareness and momentum on climate.
 
Earth Hour was born in Sydney, Australia, in 2007, as an idea that could unite people and
deliver a firm message to the then climate sceptic government that climate change was an issue Australians cared about. The hour was seen as a moment where people could unite to protect the planet regardless of age, gender, culture or religion.
 
Who could have foreseen that it would quickly evolve into a global platform for people to take action on climate change, or that the act of turning off our lights for an hour would become an iconic symbol of people’s concern to protect the planet?
 
In the nine years since, the event has grown to become the world’s largest grassroots movement for the environment, empowering millions to take action to change climate change.
 
 From one city, Earth Hour has spread to 178 countries and territories, standing testament to the role people play in climate action. The movement has helped power millions of individual actions to help change climate change, inspire policy-level change in companies and countries, and successfully harnessed the power of the crowd to make a lasting difference. Earth Hour ensures each and every one of us plays our part in creating a better future for our planet and generations to come.