Energy Doubts Cloud Daylight Saving Time

For those of us still rubbing our eyes each day, trying to adjust to the dark March mornings of the new earlier daylight saving time, here are some disappointing figures. Congress decided in 2005 to lengthen daylight saving time by about a month to save energy. But in March 2007—the first year of extended daylight hours—electric power consumption in the United States was 321.2 million megawatt hours—up 1 percent over March 2006, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Even more disturbing: Last October, the other end of the season when we should have been enjoying extended daylight energy savings, electricity use was up 3 percent over the previous year.

Of course, the experts will tell you these raw numbers really are not definitive—they are not adjusted for other factors, such as the increase in population or the differences in weather between 2006 and 2007. Who knows? Without the additional month of daylight saving time, power consumption might have gone up even more. However, the bottom line matters, too. And the plain truth is that the nation's electricity consumption is continuing its annual climb and was up 2 percent in 2007 over 2006.

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