For years I’ve been wondering about the usefulness of daylight saving time. Not in the sense that it should be abolished, but rather that its ’direction’ should change.
So I’m going to put forward a very simple theory, based on my personal experience.
The potential scope of my theory is typically regions of "late risers / late sleepers".
Although I am by definition an isolated case, I think my lifestyle matches a model more or less representative of Latin cultures.
So a group larger than a mere marginal fringe of the population of the countries that have adopted daylight saving time to date may recognise themselves in it.
Daylight saving time was introduced in France in 1975, following the 1974 oil crisis,
with the aim of saving energy by reducing lighting needs, particularly in the evening.
My first reaction is: "Well, that’s good timing, since here we are at the start of the 21st century, putting our foot right into a new oil crisis,
so it’s time for questions, and for (energy?) audits of the solutions of the past, not to say outdated ones."
I agree that it’s good to save the energy used for lighting,
but it is now a long way from representing the bulk of electricity-related energy consumption, and even further from it in the overall energy mix.
Lighting accounts for 14% of electricity consumption in a French household, i.e. 3% of the same household's overall energy expenditure.
“Do the energy balance”, to borrow an expression from my Physics teacher in preparatory classes,
and more recently from France’s Grenelle Environment Forum: work out the consumption of air and water heating, air conditioning,
and the TV (at the very least, but add the washing machine too), and the poor light bulb (soon to be low energy) will look pretty pathetic.
So, right away, and very early on, an argument that may have carried weight in 1974 needs revisiting.
Anyway, the better to oppose the reasoning, I’ll follow it. So, what does it say? Adapt human activities to the hours of sunshine?
Then let’s go! I agree, saving on lighting means using natural light as much as possible.
For example, and it applies to France too, I was living in Adelaide, Australia, and when I wrote the first version of this article,
we had just switched back to standard (winter) time. Well, as I finished my working day, I was now switching my desk lamp on an hour earlier, and soon even earlier, since the days naturally get shorter. Where’s the saving here?
Likewise, in the morning, nothing changed: it was already light when I started my day, it was still light with winter time, and I still didn’t switch the light on, so status quo here.
Finally, I’d come home, it was dark, so I switched the lights on in every room I went through.
Oh? I’ve got it all wrong? The saving isn’t made in winter but in summer?
Well, that’s a bad start, because if the savings made in summer are lost in winter, we first need to check whether one outweighs the other or not . . .
Also, since winter is when we use the most energy, I thought that might be where the slider should go. Anyway. Let’s carry on.
Right, now, in summer:
the sun naturally sets late. So I already have free daylight.
On top of that, since the clocks go forward an hour, there’s even more daylight! Precisely when I needed it least, since I already had free daylight.
Result: I wasn’t switching the light on with one hour less, and I still don’t switch it on with one hour more, so it’s wasted.
Besides, in summer we1 tend to live later, because we tell ourselves it’s ’still light’, so ’there’s time’.
If the days have been hot (in Adelaide they were really hot, at any rate), we make the most of the outdoor furniture, as it’s a bit cooler in the evening.
In the end, we’ll still go to bed later, after sunset, so we’ll need lighting in the evening when we come in from the garden or from the barbie at friends’.
The theory that we would go to bed earlier while it’s still light outside, hence the saving, I DON’T BUY IT.
I don’t know anyone who goes to bed while it’s still light outside! I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I’ve never seen it (even my parents wait for nightfall, that says it all!!). What about you?
Finally, the 4th and last case:
summer mornings. Well, here again, no change. It was already light, it’s still light with daylight saving time, nothing to report.
Conclusion: daylight saving time gains me nothing in summer, and makes me switch the light on earlier in winter: where’s the saving in that?
What’s more, since it gets dark earlier, we feel all the more justified in turning the heating on earlier, to make our little cocoon.
Not only do I find the current system goes against the need, but I’m proposing the opposite system!
My theory says to be on GMT+2 in summer, and GMT+3 in winter, unheard of! Heresy! Picture it.
The sun would rise around 10am in winter, which wouldn’t change much, since we1 live less in the morning than in the evening,
economically as well as personally at home; that’s how it is, that’s modern life . . .
At work, as at home, we use lighting anyway, because the time isn’t the issue: in winter the weather is grotty, the sky overcast,
and at best the sun is low and doesn’t give much light, so we switch the lights on at work anyway to see what we’re doing, where we drill the hole, where we put the filling, same at home.
Plus, bonus: the sun would set around 8pm! So we wouldn’t switch the lights on early in winter.
Now in summer, since we already naturally have light early and late, well: in the morning, GMT+2 wouldn’t change anything, and in the evening GMT+2
“would be enough” (why more, the sun would already set at 9 or 10pm . . . ).
What’s more, as a bonus, all year round it would be light in the evening on the road, coming home from work or heading off for the weekend, so a foreseeable reduction in the accident risk linked to twilight (what share?) . . .
Yes, but what about the morning? Dark? Good point; the theory then says we drive far more kilometres in the dark in the evening than in the morning, the latter being mostly reserved for going to work and dropping the kids off, but not for shopping or socialising.
And in the evening, with the day’s fatigue and stress not helping, conditions get worse. All the more so as we’re in a hurry to get home.
Brilliant, the theory would then please 2 ministries instead of one. Now that’s something!
As for businesses, shops and administrations, public or private: no change of habits to expect.
Lighting is everywhere all day there, so no real impact either way.
There you go, the lighting side is covered. As for heating costs, an argument I sometimes hear,
electric heating (or air conditioning in summer) is very power hungry. Heat pump or Joule effect, thermodynamics always gets the better of us, and these appliances guzzle kWh.
Since I don’t see how the time on the clock would affect the outside temperature, or humans’ need to warm up or cool down, whether at work, in shops or at home, I don’t see any impact there either, one way or the other.
I think the heating balance is roughly constant.
Now it’s your turn: prove my theory absurd, or adopt it!
Campaign for winter time to move even further than summer time: it deserves better than being Daylight Snoozing Time!
At the equinox, twice a year, we are all equal in the face of natural light. But what about the rest of the year?
References
1 The personal pronouns we and us this note refers to indicate an arbitrary ethnocentric simplification.
I assume, as a hypothesis, that the majority of citizens of the country applying this theory live with my habits.
Obviously this hypothesis is open to question, and that is where more thorough statistical studies should be carried out and read.
In any case, I think that, as a first approximation, countries with dominant Arab and Latin cultures, "late risers / late sleepers", are good candidates.
Conversely, I think that“Queensland” type regions, where daytime activities are spread such that families get up very early (5am or even earlier), are not prime candidates for this model;
as it happens, neither Queensland nor Western Australia adopted daylight saving time version 1, so they would reject v2 all the more.
