It's lights out come 8 p.m. Saturday for the TransAmerica pyramid, the Golden Gate Bridge, and businesses and dwellings across San Francisco.

Citizens plan to shut off nonessential lighting for an hour in the name of conservation – and community. Restaurants will serve dinner by candlelight, astronomy buffs will be out with their scopes, and musicians will rock out on power from a biodiesel bus.

If participants are expecting a total blackout or a quick fix for global warming, they might have to settle instead for a free energy-efficient light bulb and an event T-shirt that reads: "Good things happen in the dark."

"Our expectations in terms of actual energy savings are not as high as our expectation in terms of just communicating how easy it is to do something very simple," says Nathan Tyler, who's bringing the idea to San Francisco and Los Angeles – and eventually nationwide.

For anyone who has wondered about the wastefulness of the bright lights in big cities, it turns out that some simple fixes do work. US skylines, particularly in California, have become "greener" in recent years with the help of new technologies, tighter regulations, and simple changes in behavior.

"If you look at the San Francisco skyline at night, it's a whole lot darker than it used to be," says Ken Cleveland, director of government public affairs for the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) here. "Some people in the past would have lighting on their buildings at night as part of their signature, [but] times are changing."

Many buildings now have installed motion sensors to shut lights off automatically, often with the help of money paid into a fund by electricity customers.

Other creative ideas are coming, too:

•In a move last month that could spread nationally, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) will now allow high-rise owners to meter each tenant's electricity usage and penalize energy hogs, rather than rely on one bill for an entire building.

•BOMA plans to roll out a "green lease" program early next year that would commit tenants to recycle, conserve water, avoid toxin-emitting furniture, and shut off unused lights and computers.

•San Francisco lawmakers will vote in coming months on a measure to ban the use of older, energy-wasting fluorescent tubes in the downtown commercial district.

California has been a pioneer in energy efficiency, particularly with its stringent building standards. Those regulations, along with appliance-efficiency standards, have saved more than $56 billion in energy costs since their inception in 1978, according to the California Energy Commission. Californians now use less energy per capita than residents of any other state.

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