The Eiffel Tower’s famous lights will start shutting off early

The City of Light will get a little bit dimmer—at least for about an hour each night. In an effort to save energy amid rising costs and the climate crisis, the Eiffel Tower’s flashing lights will turn off early, going out at 11:45 p.m. rather than the usual 1 a.m.

The new cut-off time for the tower’s lights begins September 23, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced, and is part of the city’s plan to reach a 10% energy savings. Along with the iconic landmark, municipal buildings, such as town halls, will also go dark earlier, at 10 p.m.; public city-managed buildings will gradually drop their temperatures; and the start of winter heating for administrative buildings will be pushed back a month.

These may sound like small steps, but those sorts of activities add up: Buildings are responsible for about 40% of global energy consumption and a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, per the International Energy Agency, and a significant portion of that use comes from heating, cooling, and lighting. For the Eiffel Tower, the nightly lights represent 4% of the monument’s annual energy use, according to the Societe d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel; upgrades have previously been made to make the tower more efficient, including a switch to LED lights.

The initiatives come amid soaring electricity prices, not only in France but throughout Europe. Russia, which last year provided about 40% of the EU’s gas, cut its supply this year due to its war in Ukraine. That’s caused a ripple effect—Germany, for example, depends on Russia for 55% of its gas supply, and has since started to get more gas from Norway, cutting into a primary source of the energy for other countries like Britain.

The European Union recently announced plans to raise more than $140 billion from energy companies in order to protect customers from skyrocketing energy prices, and also encouraged its member states to cut electricity demand by at least 10%, until the end of March 2023. Along with France’s initiatives, other countries are taking steps to reduce their energy use: German monuments are shutting off their lights earlier as well, the Netherlands is urging its residents to take shorter showers, and Spain has announced limits on air-conditioning.