Power outage? Building engineers asleep at the helm? Nope. It's just Earth Hour. On Saturday, for the third year, local owners and managers turned off lights for one hour (8:30-9:30pm). ComEd reported a 1% decrease in energy use from the participating buildings, including landmarks like Navy Pier, the Chicago Theater, and the AON Center. More than 14k businesses in Illinois took part.

Our less environmentally-conscious camera insisted we turn on the lights to snap JLL’s Kristen Mulcrone, Michele Wisor, James Martinez, John Schmidt, Nicky Vassallo and Matt Amato. They manage the AON Center for Piedmont Office Realty Trust. Kristen and Michele alerted AON’s 45 tenants (via Captivate news screens in the elevator, e-mail, and newsletters) to flip the switch when they left on Friday. John and his engineer crew spent 45 minutes making sure they did, then switched off  common area lighting. Earth Hour is part of the company's energy conservation challenge and national best practices. The building uses about 3M kilowatt hrs of energy/year.