It has begun—daylight saving time—the implementation of widespread jet-lag across almost an entire continent and a good chunk of the planet, leaving the multitudes feeling a little more tired and grouchy than usual; but apart from its ability to interfere with sleep patterns and productivity levels, how much influence does daylight saving time have on energy conservation?
Where did daylight saving time come from?
Daylight saving time (it is properly called daylight saving time, or DST, not daylight savings time), was actually invented and first proposed in 1895 by New Zealand entomologist George Hudson. His advocacy for DST was a response to shift work. Hudson valued having extra daylight hours after his shift to participate in common leisure activities—like collecting bugs. However, Hudson wasn’t the only one who had the idea. In 1905, English builder and outdoorsman William Willett independently conceived DST after noticing how many daylight hours were wasted in sleep while he had to cut his golf games short at dusk, and prior, in 1784, Benjamin Franklin published a letter parodically suggesting ringing church bells and firing cannons at sunrise to cause the public to rise early to conserve candles—he also recommended taxing window shutters and rationing candles.
The current form of DST, however, wasn’t broadly implemented until WWI. The German Empire and Austria-Hungary first implemented DST as a means of conserving coal. Britain, its allies, many European neutrals, Russia, and the United States soon followed suit, but it wasn’t broadly and lastingly adopted in Europe and North America until the energy crisis of the 1970s.
A history of energy conservation
Throughout history, variations of daylight saving time have all embodied the same idea: that adjusting the clocks to better match daylight hours can improve efficiency, whether that relates to the conservation of electricity, coal, or even candles, or the extension of evening leisure activities. But is DST still relevant in today’s world of technology? Can it still help us to save on energy?
The fact of the matter is that research on this is unclear. In theory, the premise should work: matching the clocks with daylight hours should decrease the number of daylight hours people sleep through and thus increase the number of daylight hours that are available in the evening, preventing people from having to turn the lights on during their evening leisure activities. The problem is that lights aren’t the only problem when it comes to energy conservation now.
With high-efficiency LED lightbulbs and automatic sensors and timers to help limit the amount of energy that is consumed by lighting, the potential savings that are introduced by daylight saving time may not be enough to counter other energy expenditures—like the fact that many of our evening leisure activities are now technology-based—Netflix doesn’t require a well-lit room in the same way settling down with a book or a needlepoint does, and it’s a form of leisure that consumes energy regardless of DST’s influence. Further, many have suggested that, in addition to causing us to run the coffee maker a little longer to combat the DST jet-lag, daylight saving time may actually lead to an increase in energy consumption because air conditioners have to be run at a higher power during those more intense hours of evening sunlight.
