What About Daylight Saving Time?

Daylight Saving Time has been associated with advantages regarding energy usage and the enjoyment of longer sun hours. These advantages are mainly observed in higher latitudes however as day and night times are merely constant close to the equator. This article will take a brief look at the debate.

Daylight Saving Time or summer time, commonly abbreviated as DST, is the process of moving the clock one hour forward in spring and one hour backward in autumn. Usually this change in time happens during the night at 2pm, moving forward to 3pm, and 3pm, moving backward to 2pm. The process is coordinated all across country or time zone boundaries.

The concept has been first proposed by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 and was first implemented in 1916 in Germany and then most of the other European countries in order to optimize the total amount of sunlight hours during the day and save energy during World War I. Today various countries, especially in Europe and North America use Daylight Saving Time (although many countries have introduced and abandoned the concept).

The main argument for turning the clock forward is to use the sun hours during the summer most efficiently. Public life does not start earlier in the summer although there is sun early in the morning due to the longer days. This is mainly because most human activities are being bound to a fixed schedule, e.g. work starts at a certain time, school schedules are fixed etc. Now the logic is that if a human sleeps for a certain amount of hours (usually around or below 8 hours), you might as well sleep while there is no daylight. In the higher latitudes daylight can can be observed in the summer for around 16 hours at times (depending on the location). By moving the clock forward in the summer, the average schedule will be pushed to an earlier time and the average citizen will be able to enjoy most of the sunlight awake. Optimizing the productive hours for the population is usually associated with savings in energy usage (since most people sleep when it is dark and therefore use less energy). In addition the average population will enjoy more light in their free leisure time in the evening.

The opposition to switching the clock is mainly citing the disruption caused due to turning clocks forwards and backwards. While the act of coordinating a time change is already very expensive there are several impacts on human nature as well. Moving the clock forward and therefore forcing a different schedule on humans can be very intrusive in a person?s rhythm. Think about a slight jet lag that comes from the change in rhythm due to the time change. While energy usage is often cited as main argument in today?s changing industry landscape this might not impact the overall energy consumption enough to justify the time switch. Global time zones already add quite some complexity to a globalized world, switching the time only adds to this complexity.

An alternative is to introduce permanent Daylight Saving Time as being practiced in some countries such as Argentine or Georgia. The summer time is used throughout the year eliminating the need for a complex switch twice a year. In addition the full advantages of DST can be observed in the summer.

In his spare time Jan works on tizomat.com an easy tool for time zone lookup, conversion and especially visualisation.

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