Few Benefits to Daylight Saving Time—Should We Scrap It?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...benefits-daylight-saving-time-scrap-it-516694
To this day, our laws equate daylight saving with energy conservation. However, recent research suggests that DST actually increases energy use.
This is what I found in a study coauthored with Yale economist Matthew Kotchen. We used a policy change in Indiana to estimate DST effects on electricity consumption. Prior to 2007, most Indiana counties did not observe DST. By comparing households’ electricity demand before and after DST was adopted, month by month, we showed that DST had actually increased residential electricity demand in Indiana by 1 to 4 percent annually.
The largest effects occurred in the summer, when DST aligns our lives with the hottest part of the day, so people tend to use more air conditioning, and late fall, when we wake up in the dark and use more heating with no reduction in lighting needs.
Other studies corroborate these findings. Research in Australia and in the United States shows that DST does not decrease total energy use.
(More at above url)
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...benefits-daylight-saving-time-scrap-it-516694
To this day, our laws equate daylight saving with energy conservation. However, recent research suggests that DST actually increases energy use.
This is what I found in a study coauthored with Yale economist Matthew Kotchen. We used a policy change in Indiana to estimate DST effects on electricity consumption. Prior to 2007, most Indiana counties did not observe DST. By comparing households’ electricity demand before and after DST was adopted, month by month, we showed that DST had actually increased residential electricity demand in Indiana by 1 to 4 percent annually.
The largest effects occurred in the summer, when DST aligns our lives with the hottest part of the day, so people tend to use more air conditioning, and late fall, when we wake up in the dark and use more heating with no reduction in lighting needs.
Other studies corroborate these findings. Research in Australia and in the United States shows that DST does not decrease total energy use.
(More at above url)
