Summer or winter time? The questionposed by the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker and which the Strasbourg Parliament will examine by next spring, is increasingly debated. In reality, there has already been a debate, or rather there should have been, given that only 4,6 million Europeans took part in the survey promoted this summer by the EU on the question, mostly from the countries of the North, the most interested in the matter. First of all, it needs to be clarified: it is not a question of abolishing summer time, but of abolishing time changes during the year (transition to summer time at the end of March and return to standard time at the end of October), leaving individual countries the choice of alternatively adopting summer time (therefore the sun rises later and sets later) or solar time (therefore shorter days even in summer).
The ratio of summer time has always been primarily that of energy saving. Now this assumption is being questioned: “Daylight saving time was adopted for various reasons including that of saving energy. Objectively, this reason no longer has any reason to exist. The saving is marginal, so much so that many countries have gradually abolished the time change: Russia, Turkey, China,” said Transport Commissioner and head of the dossier, Violeta Bulc. “There are those who attribute negative health consequences to the time change and those who instead consider that the time change allows you to stay in the open air longer and is therefore good for physical activity”, she added.
In reality, for a country like Italy (each country has different data depending on the time zone and the price of energy), the savings are not gigantic but not even so irrelevant. From 2004 to 2017, according to data processed by Terna, the lower electricity consumption for the country due to summer time was around 8 billion and 540 million kilowatt hours overall (quantity equivalent to the annual electricity demand of a region such as Sardinia) e in economic terms it has resulted in savings for citizens of around 1 billion. This is an average of 598 million kilowatt hours per year (compared to a total of 320 billion kilowatt hours consumed by Italians in twelve months, therefore a share of less than 0,2%), but the data on economic savings, year by year, it tends to grow (also due to the increase in the cost of energy): in 2016 energy savings amounted to 94,5 million, in 2017 to 110 million, this year it is estimated at around 116 million.
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Furthermore, without considering the impact on the environment: in 2017, again according to Terna data, those seven months with an extra hour of light per day made it possible to avoid CO2 emissions into the atmosphere for a quantity of 320 thousand tons, effectively making the electricity consumption of over 100 families 200% clean. To give other parameters, 320 tonnes less CO2 each year correspond to those produced by a generic 500 MW coal-fired power plant in Italy in around 700 hours of operation, or to those annually emitted by around 100.000 diesel cars which traveled 20.000 km each (a mileage higher than the average annual one for a car in Italy)
However, one aspect should be noted, which does not blame the countries that no longer want to change the time: in the purely summer months, the impact of daylight saving time is irrelevant. In fact, the month that marks the greatest energy savings estimated by Terna is October, with about 158 million kilowatt hours (equal to about 30% of the total). Moving the hands forward by one hour delays the use of artificial light at a time when work activities are still in full swing. In the summer months, from June to August, the "delay" effect in switching on the light bulbs occurs in the evening hours, when work activities are mostly finished, and records less evident results in terms of electricity savings.
The issue of renewables and solar energy is also irrelevant, which some have also pointed out: as is obvious and intuitive, it is our daily schedules that change, not the hours of light throughout the day and year. At most, the possible adoption of summer time throughout the year would mean having fewer hours of light in the morning in winter (the sun could rise when it is almost 9 in our country), at the peak of the consumption curve, which therefore could not be covered by clean energy at that time. However, they could be in the afternoon, given that the sun would set almost at 17 instead of before 18 pm, when some categories of workers are already back home. In the summer, on the other hand, nothing would change. What if instead we decided to adopt solar time throughout the year? It would be winter that would remain exactly as we know it, while in summer we would have shorter days, with higher consumption exactly equal to that already quantified.
