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Tomorrow marks the second annual Earth Hour to raise awareness of the effect of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions throughout the world.

The idea, originally spawned in Australia, is to get individuals and institutions to turn off their lights and minimize their power usage between 8 and 9 p.m. The sheer awe of seeing a whole city go dim when taking concerted action will inspire everybody to work together to curb energy use and, thus, carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Or so organizers hope.

The objectives of Earth Hour are laudable but, this being the industrialized world bent on tokenism and protecting modern conveniences at all costs, don't be surprised to see a lot of people switch lights off for an hour on Saturday night and just assume they've done their part. By Monday, they'll be back in their cars driving - alone - to work, where they'll log in to a computer that has been on all weekend.

The real question we ought to consider head-on as we float through this year's Earth Hour is: What am I doing about climate change for the other 364 days and 23 hours of the year?

Increasingly, some new-housing developers are getting serious about building in groundbreaking improvements designed to conserve energy, recycle materials and water, and reduce carbon emissions.

It would be bad form to rain on their parade at this point by suggesting that some of the most effective emission-control technologies - solar power, geothermal heating, heat-recovery ventilation, weather-sealed windows and doors - have been around for 25 years. So I guess I'll just say, better late than never.

Until recently, if you wanted a new low-rise house that exceeded the basic standards of energy efficiency, more often than not it was up to you to undertake the improvements after you moved in.

And if you were in a condominium building, well, you were pretty much stuck with whatever heating, cooling and energy-conservation technologies the developer provided. More often than not, these would be the least-expensive ones available.

The problem - as developers are only too happy to explain when asked - is that green or even greener building techniques and technologies are considerably more expensive than the standard-issue ones with which they are familiar and have installed thousands of times before.

Two things happened in the past seven years that have turned the tide and forced builders to get serious about green building techniques. The first was the natural-gas price spikes in 2001, which gave homeowners an economic reason to conserve energy.

This also affected condo owners, whose utility costs were often pooled building-wide and paid through maintenance fees that suffered an unpleasant jolt upward at the time.

Then in 2003, consumers began demanding more green features after Canada's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The intense debate about the Kyoto climate change initiative served as a tipping point in the public consciousness, especially in urban areas such as Toronto where weather patterns and air quality were changing noticeably.

Since then, developers have gradually implemented more green building techniques and in a lot of cases have eaten the higher costs attached, to use the advances as selling features. The strategy has paid off in attracting members of the younger home-buyers market who are keen to contribute meaningfully to reducing carbon emissions.

The industry standard in determining the extent of environmentally friendly building and energy technology is LEED - Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. A developer can submit its project or dwelling to the judgment of the LEED criteria; ratings range from "certified" at the bottom, and move upward through silver, gold and platinum.

Over the next couple of weeks, New Digs will take a look at some of Greater Toronto's new housing developments aiming to achieve a standard of energy efficiency, water conservation and technological innovation that will help put a real dent in greenhouse gas emissions when Earth Hour is over.