Does daylight savings time help the Earth?

By Doug Moss and Roddy Scheer
Extending daylight savings time would have drawbacks.
Extending daylight savings time would have drawbacks.

Dear EarthTalk: Would extending daylight savings time year-round have benefits for the environment?

-- Jane Wyckoff, Soquel, California
    The concept of daylight savings time, whereby we set our clocks ahead by an hour from midspring through midfall so we can get more done using natural light later into the evening, was first proposed more than 200 years ago by Benjamin Franklin as a way to save money on candles. While Franklin’s idea didn’t catch on back then, Germany instituted a war effort version to conserve fuel during World War I. The U.S. followed suit in 1918 but scrapped the idea shortly after the war ended.
    Daylight savings time came back to the U.S. during World War II when President D. Roosevelt instituted it year-round between February 1942 and September 1945. After the war, some states adopted summer daylight savings time, but it wasn’t until Congress passed the Uniform Time Act in 1966 that it became standard across the country. Initially Arizona and Michigan opted out, but these days only Arizona and Hawaii don’t observe daylight savings time.
     This past November, Californians voted for an extension of daylight savings time year-round across their state. The rationale is that the twice-a-year time change causes lost or poor sleep, which leads to more accidents, aggravates existing health issues and has even been linked to a short-term uptick in suicides. Oregon and Washington are also considering aligning with California so the entire West Coast could be on daylight savings time throughout the year.
     But according to a 2011 study published in The Review of Economics and Statistics by researchers from Yale and Claremont McKenna, such a change may not be good news for the environment. “Our main finding is that, contrary to the policy's intent, daylight savings time increases electricity demand,” report researchers Matthew Kotchen and Laura Grant. “Estimates of the overall increase are approximately 1 percent, but we find that the effect is not constant throughout the daylight savings time period.” According to their data, daylight savings time causes the greatest increase in electricity consumption in the fall (estimates range from 2 percent to 4 percent) when dipping temperatures send Hoosiers inside earlier to turn up their thermostats. They estimate that increased energy demand as a result of daylight savings time adds about $9 million a year to household power bills across Indiana, while the social costs of the increased emissions range from $1.7 to $5.5 million annually.
      Of course, effects varies by region. A study by the California Energy Commission found that extending daylight savings time would have little to no effect on energy use in that state. And a U.S. Department of Energy analysis of 67 different power utilities across the country concluded that a four-week extension of daylight savings time would save Americans 0.5 percent of electricity per day, or 1.3 trillion watt-hours in total — enough to power 100,000 households for a year.
     Whether the recent interest in extending daylight savings time throughout the year on the West Coast will take hold across the country is anyone’s guess. In the meantime, we can all look forward to the second Sunday in March to spring ahead and leave the short and dreary winter days behind us — at least for a few months.

     Related:

     Saving energy: The bulb goes on

    This column was reprinted with permission. EarthTalk is produced by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of the nonprofit Earth Action Network. To donate, visit www.earthtalk.org. Send questions to: question@earthtalk.org.        

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