The Wall Street Journal explains a new study of Indiana residents who were forced to adopt daylight saving time.
Now, researchers found, daylight saving time seems to actually require more electricity, despite the fact that it was designed by Ben Franklin to save money.
The WSJ reports:
[Researchers] conclude that the reduced cost of lighting in
afternoons during daylight-saving time is more than offset by the
higher air-conditioning costs on hot afternoons and increased heating
costs on cool mornings.
"I've never had a paper with such a clear and
unambiguous finding as this," says Mr. (Matthew) Kotchen, who presented the paper
at a National Bureau of Economic Research conference this month.
A 2007 study by economists Hendrik Wolff and Ryan
Kellogg of the temporary extension of daylight-saving in two Australian
territories for the 2000 Summer Olympics also suggested the clock
change increases energy use.
