How can it be?

According to two researchers from the University of California, Matthew J. Kotchen and Laura E. Grant, the daylight saving time indeed uses more energy rather than less.

The daylight saving time was first proposed by William Willett in 1907. Since then many countries have used it in one time or another. Perhaps the most widely known of all would be the use of DST(Daylight Saving Time) during the World War I and the adaptation by the United States to save energy.

DST involves adjusting the clock forward by one hour during the spring and adjusting it back during the autumn. The idea is to save on the use of artificial lighting and hence reduces the energy use.

However, in this journal published by the pair from University of California, this might not be the case anymore. They did a research and found out that the Indiana counties who adopted the DST in 2006 have seen their electricity consumption increasing by 1% to 4%. They compared 2006’s energy use figures in the 77 affected counties with the energy use in the years before the switch.

The reason why this happen could be because of air-conditioning. The energy on air-conditioning by homes greatly outweighs the energy saving from the reduced use of lighting.

Since energy consumption is increased, the DST scheme has lost its purpose, which is to save energy. They concluded that this whole idea of DST needs to be reassess, whether is it necessary to continue or to simply remove it.

Research Paper(PDF) - Does Daylight Saving Time Save Energy?
Via - Wall Street Journal