Give up thedaylight savings time It wouldn't seem like a good idea in times of climate change. A few years ago theEuropean Union was considering it, leaving each Member State the possibility to decide whether to maintain the current setting, with two different times in two periods of the year, or whether to opt for one or the other, that is, for solar time - the one in force in the winter months - or for summer time, the one we adopt in the sunniest seasons. Then came the Covid pandemic, the priorities were obviously different and the proposal ended up in some drawer of the European Parliament and nothing more was done about it.
At the time, however, other countries in the world had already decided to take that step, that is, to move to a single time all year round. One of the most significant experiments, in terms of surface area and population, is that of Brazil, fifth largest country in the world and that inside it It has 4 time zones, although almost all of its more than 200 million inhabitants have the capital Brasilia as their reference.
Daylight Saving Time, What Brazil Is Thinking of Doing
Here, Brazil said goodbye (or goodbye?) to daylight saving time in 2019, under the government of Jair Bolsonaro, but for a year now he has been wondering whether it was really a good idea. He is wondering even more now, given that the South American country, in theory ahigh humidity area due to the presence of the largest rainforest on the planet, theAmazon, is instead going through these weeks the worst drought in its history, with temperatures at least 5 degrees above average, tens of thousands of fires spread across the territory, humidity levels lower than those of the Sahara desert, and unbreathable air in large cities due to toxic fumes and a total lack of rainfall.
Daylight saving time, electricity consumption in Brazil
This alarming climate picture is inevitably impacting on the power consumptions, given that Brazil produces almost all of its energy from renewable sources, particularly fromhydroelectric exploiting its enormous hydrographic basins (the Itaipù power plant, in the Iguaçu Falls area, is the third in the world for installed capacity). Today, however, all this water is no longer there: Amazon is burning at record rates and the Madeira River, its main tributary, is located in the worst drought in history and it was practically reduced to a stretch of sand.
Considering that in winter (it is winter in the southern hemisphere now) the peak in consumption occurs towards the end of the afternoon, and that we are not yet able to store all the energy transformed by renewable sources, the result is that with solar time, that is to say with the "shorter" days - that is with natural lighting that starts earlier and ends earlier - in the winter months at that time of day it is already dark and the Solar and wind plants are unable to meet the increased demand.
This, for now, is only determining a increase in bills, but in the long term, taking into account that climate change will make these situations increasingly frequent and extreme, the best solution could be to return to dual time, that is, to reinstate daylight saving time in the summer months. Lula government is seriously thinking about it, and the decision that will be taken could set an example worldwide: daylight saving time could prove to be a defense against global warming and its dramatic consequences.
