Paris Mayor announces energy saving plan

PARIS: Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced that all municipal establishments will turn off lighting at 10 p.m. from September 23 in order to save energy.

According to Hidalgo, this measure will be applied to all public buildings, including municipal museums, the town halls of each Parisian arrondissement and tourist attractions, such as the Eiffel Tower, reports Xinhua news agency.

She said that all buildings owned by the City of Paris will dial heating down from 19 degrees Celsius to 18 degrees Celsius during the day and 12 degrees Celsius for nights and weekends.

Nursing homes and kindergartens will be exceptions.

Water temperature in the city's 40 swimming pools will also be reduced by one degree Celsius.

The objective of this "energy sobriety plan" is to "further reduce" the city's consumption by 10 per cent, the equivalent of the "energy consumption of 226 schools", she explained.

The Mayor called on the state to "do the same thing" for national monuments, and the owners of private monuments to take steps "to move in the same direction".

France, like many other European countries, is facing an energy crisis ahead of the winter season.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne have already announced that rolling blackouts are "possible" this winter for companies.

In early September, Minister for Energy Transition Agnes Pannier-Runacher said that the country's strategic gas reserves would be 100 per cent filled by November 1.

Meanwhile, French multinational electric utility company EDF has committed to restarting all of the country's 32 nuclear reactors currently under maintenance for this winter.