The Great DST Debate

Posted on March 10, 2008
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by Willy Ritch

Dawn was barely underway as I waited for the bus with my daughter this morning (why in the world do 6th graders have to leave for school at 6:45?)–it felt like we were back in January. Walking down the driveway in the dark is something I can handle, and to me it’s well worth the extra hour of daylight we now enjoy at the end of the day. Thanks to a new law, Daylight Savings Time comes earlier (as it did last fall for the first time) and now starts earlier as well. The change was part of an energy bill passed by Congress and the idea is that a longer daylight savings time saves energy.

Congressman Fred Upton (R-Michigan) was one of the sponsors of the legislation, and he lays out the logic in an OpEd in the Detroit Free Press:

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy estimates that the cumulative benefit of the four-week extension through 2020 will be a saving of approximately $4.4 billion and a reduction of carbon emissions by 10.8 million metric tons, cutting harmful greenhouse gases.

How does extending DST conserve energy? For one, extended daylight during the evening hours will help keep heating costs down. As a nation, the more daylight we have at our disposal during the waking hours, the less electricity we use.

Not so fast, say some. An editorial in the same paper claims extending DST actually increases energy usage:

Two researchers from the University of California-Santa Barbara reviewed 7 million electric bills covering three years in southern Indiana counties that did not go on DST until 2006. They found a 1% to 4% increase in electricity use, and a concurrent increase in pollution from electric plants.

“We find that the longstanding rationale for DST is questionable, and that, if anything, the policy seems to have the opposite of its intended effect,” says the report from Matthew Kotchen and Laura Grant. But the researchers also say a full evaluation of DST has to include the benefits of recreational opportunities, public safety and economic growth that come with longer evening daylight.

My experience suggests that we will be using less energy at our house. Lights were going on in the morning before the time change this weekend, and they went on this morning for the same period of time. In the afternoon, however, the lights won’t be going on until an hour later than last week. It seems like the daylight at the end of the day is where I’ll be able to use it the most.

Here’s one thing that there’s no debate on: if you sign up for clean energy at home, the energy you do use won’t be coming from a carbon-dioxide spewing fossil fuel power plant.

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