The City of Greater Geelong will join more than 14,000 organisations worldwide that will switch off non-essential lighting for Earth Hour at 8pm on Saturday 29 March.

Environment portfolio holder Cr Tom O'Connor said non essential lighting at Council buildings and certain public feature lighting would be turned off for the hour.

"The City of Greater Geelong is a willing participant in the Earth Hour movement which has grown from an exclusively Sydney based event in 2007 to a global phenomenon this year," Cr O'Connor said.

"And we'd like to extend a challenge to other Geelong organisations, be they government, business or community groups to do the same and switch off the lights for one hour on Saturday night.

"I would love to see Geelong surpass Sydney's effort last year so the challenge is on - let's see how green Geelong can be," he said.

"The minimum commitment is to simply turn off your lights for one hour so it's quite an easy and painless introduction to the concept of reducing energy consumption."

Cities participating in Earth Hour in 2008 include Copenhagen, Toronto, Chicago, Melbourne, Brisbane and Tel Aviv as well as Geelong and founding city Sydney.

The 2007 Earth Hour reduced Sydney's energy consumption by 10.2 per cent for the hour and saved more than 24 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere - the equivalent of taking 48,613 cars off the road for one hour.

Cr O'Connor said the aim of the Earth Hour campaign was to demonstrate that individual action on a mass scale can help effect a global change. 

Cr O'Connor said the City of Greater Geelong was aiming to make substantial reductions in its greenhouse gas emissions and had already introduced measures such as the sourcing of greenpower for public amenities and the changeover to more fuel efficient vehicles.

"Participating in Earth Hour is one way that the City and the community in general can demonstrate its determination to achieve the sorts of energy savings we'll need to make if we are to reduce the affect of climate change," he said.

People wishing to participate in Earth Hour can register at www.earthour.org.