\naccording to most studies. In fact, a 2008 study found DST “may actually waste energy<\/a>”:<\/p>\n
Up until two years ago, only 15 of Indiana’s 92 counties
\nset their clocks an hour ahead in the spring and an hour back in the
\nfall. The rest stayed on standard time all year, in part because
\nfarmers resisted the prospect of having to work an extra hour in the
\nmorning dark. But many residents came to hate falling in and out of
\nsync with businesses and residents in neighboring states and prevailed
\nupon the Indiana Legislature to put the entire state on daylight-saving
\ntime beginning in the spring of 2006.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Indiana’s change of heart gave University of
\nCalifornia-Santa Barbara economics professor Matthew Kotchen and Ph.D.
\nstudent Laura Grant a unique way to see how the time shift affects
\nenergy use. Using more than seven million monthly meter readings from
\nDuke Energy Corp., covering nearly all the households in southern
\nIndiana for three years, they were able to compare energy consumption
\nbefore and after counties began observing daylight-saving time.
\nReadings from counties that had already adopted daylight-saving time
\nprovided a control group that helped them to adjust for changes in
\nweather from one year to the next.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Their finding: Having the entire state switch to <\/p>\n “I’ve never had a paper with such a clear and unambiguous finding as <\/p>\n A 2007 study by economists Hendrik Wolff and Ryan Kellogg of the The Kotchen and Grant NBER paper is here<\/a>. It concludes:<\/p>\n We also estimate social costs of increased pollution <\/p>\n There are nevertheless several reasons we might infer that DST In “13 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Daylight-Saving Time<\/a>,” U.S News notes:<\/p>\n Daylight-saving time was first used during World War I, An Australian study<\/a> concluded “These results suggest that current plans and proposals to extend DST will fail to conserve energy.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Probably the best recent case for DST is from a 2008 Department of Energy report for Congress, which found DST saved a whopping .02 percent<\/a> of the country’s total use in 2007. But Wikipedia<\/a> lists a bunch of other studies on DST, most of which (but not all) come to a similar conclusion as the Australia study.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n DST’s general inanity is clear in this Rachel Maddow interview of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight-Saving Time<\/a>:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n U.S. News concludes, “When clocks spring forward, people lose sleep, have more heart attacks, and might not even save energy.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Enjoy!<\/p>\n Related Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n For green homes, should energy trump everything else?<\/a><\/p>\n Ending North Carolina’s dependence on dirty coal<\/a><\/p>\n The other half of Kerry-Graham-Lieberman is weak too<\/a><\/p>\n
\ndaylight-saving time each year, rather than stay on standard time,
\ncosts Indiana households an additional $8.6 million in electricity
\nbills. They conclude that the reduced cost of lighting in afternoons
\nduring daylight-saving time is more than offset by the higher
\nair-conditioning costs on hot afternoons and increased heating costs on
\ncool mornings.<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nthis,” says Mr. Kotchen, who presented the paper at a National Bureau
\nof Economic Research conference this month.<\/p>\n
\ntemporary extension of daylight-saving in two Australian territories
\nfor the 2000 Summer Olympics also suggested the clock change increases
\nenergy use.<\/p>\n
\nemissions that range from $1.7 to $5.5 million per year. Finally, we
\nargue that the effect is likely to be even stronger in other regions of
\nthe United States …<\/p>\n
\nincreases electricity demand across a much broader area. First,
\nexisting simulations suggest that DST increases electricity consumption
\non average over 224 different locations throughout the United States
\n(Rock 1997). Our results also corroborate the results of such
\nsimulation exercises. Second, even when prior research finds little or
\nno electricity savings from DST in the United States, the effect is
\nsmaller in more southern regions (DOE 2006). Finally, the fact that we
\nidentify the underlying tradeoff between artificial illumi- nation and
\nprimarily air-conditioning suggests that the DST effect that we
\nestimate is likely to be even stronger in the more populated, southern
\nregions of the Unites States. Further south, the days are shorter
\nduring the summer, meaning that decreases in electrical use from
\nlighting are likely to be smaller, and air conditioning is more common
\nand intensively used, meaning that increases in electricity for cooling
\nare likely to be bigger.<\/p>\n
\nas part of an effort in the United States and other warring countries
\nto conserve fuel. In theory, using daylight more efficiently saves fuel
\nand energy because it reduces the nation’s need for artificial light.<\/p>\n