Daylight Savings Time Does Not Save Energy

The Daylight Savings Time myth of saving energy has been debunked by a study from a pair of researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara. The practice of setting the clocks ahead one hour in the spring, and pushing them back an hour in the fall is coming even earlier this year - this Sunday morning (March 9) at 2 a.m.. The researchers found that the impact in just 77 counties in Indiana was a net increase in electrical usage that cost $8.6 million in direct utility billings, and between $1.6 and $5.3 million dollars in ancillary societal costs.

According to the research team of Matthew Kotchen and Laura Grant, the opportunity to actually study the impact of Daylight Savings Time centered around Indiana, because until 2006, the Indiana legislature had refused to force a uniform time standard on its counties. Until then, the state contained a hodgepodge of different time zones, with some counties staying constantly on Eastern Time to stay on the same clock with New York, others staying on Central Time to match Chicago - and others refusing to change their clocks at all, staying constantly on either Central or Eastern Standard Time.

The practice of Daylight Savings Time made sense when it was first proposed by Benjamin Franklin back in 1784, when the primary lighting source was candles and oil lamps. And it made sense 132 years later, when the practice was first mandated by the German and United States governments in 1916, in order to lower their wartime economies' use of gas and oil for lighting purposes.

The United States repealed the law soon after the end of hostilities, and reinstituted the policy during World War II, and repealed it again at the end of the war.

In 1966, the United States established a permanent Daylight Savings Time, and has tinkered with the dates three times since, broadening and shortening it as its perceived energy advantages shifted around events such as the Arab oil embargo of 1973.

Then in 2007, Daylight Savings Time was extended even further, now lasting from the second Sunday in March through the first Sunday in November. And in the meantime, Indiana codified a uniform set of time zones for every county in 2005, putting 77 of those counties in different time beginning with the start of Daylight Savings Time in 2006.

The team did find energy savings occurred - but only in the spring months. And overall, the impact was an increase in residential electrical usage of 1% to 4% because Congress seemingly failed to take into account the nearly-universal adoption of a major household technology between 1945 and 2007 - air conditioning.

The report was released in preliminary form February 5, 2008 by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Work was funded by the UC Energy Institute, and the preliminary draft was released for discussion at an energy summit being held at Stanford University on February 8, 2008.