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Does the change to daylight savings time really conserve more electricity?While the the days may be bright a bit earlier, new research shows that "falling back" each fall might only help conserve energy by giving Americans that extra hour of sleep. It is now two years into this experiment with our clocks. The original reason for this change, which was to conserve electricity, hasn't been borne out according to some studies. In fact, a pair of economists assert that Americans may actually be using more energy as a result of this change. Matthew Kotchen, who is a professor of economics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, found that the darker fall mornings at the end of the daylight savings period have led to a 2 to 4 percent increase in electricity consumption. They studied the southern Indiana region as an example. This increase in electricity usage has cost individual households almost $4 per year while also increasing greenhouse gas pollution from generating the electricity. Electricity and energy savings have been at the heart of daylight saving proposals for over 200 years. This goes back to when Ben Franklin argued that it would conserve vast amounts of candle tallow. The study by Kotchen focused on over 20 Indiana counties where three different time schemes were combined into one in 2006. The study determined that reduction and savings in electricity for lighting during the daylight saving months was more than offset by increases in demand for both cooling and heating during those hours that residents were usually at home.
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