Image: VOLKER Weihbold
On Sunday, March 26, 2023, the hands will jump to 3 a.m. at 2 a.m. – although the change between normal and summer time should actually have had its day. After the topic caused a stir in Europe a little more than four years ago with a proposal by the EU Commission, things have calmed down again: there is no sign of a changeover to just summer or winter time.
Abolition is on hold
The ball is still in the hands of the EU Council of Ministers, which last discussed the abolition of the twice-yearly time change in June 2019. The transport ministers are responsible. In March 2019, the European Parliament voted by a large majority to abolish summer time by 2021 – or a year later if there were difficulties for the internal market.
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But then came the corona pandemic and then the war in Ukraine, and the EU has had completely different priorities since then. A majority of the member states would have to agree to the abolition of summer time if this were to actually become a reality. Nobody has raised the issue again since then, according to EU Council circles. The time change in the EU is therefore likely to have become a timeless niche topic with no current relevance.
Time change: That’s what the Upper Austrians say
An hour more daylight
Throughout the EU, daylight saving time continues to be switched to on the last Sunday in March – and back again on the last Sunday in October. Daylight saving time was introduced in Europe in 1973 on the occasion of the oil crisis and with the aim of saving energy. With the time difference, one hour of daylight should be gained for companies and households. France was the first to do so.
Austria only decided to introduce it in 1979 because of administrative problems and because it wanted harmonization of traffic with Switzerland and Germany. These two countries did not introduce daylight saving time until 1980. However, summer time already existed in the Alpine republic during the First World War. In 1916 it applied to the monarchy from May 1st to September 30th, but was then discontinued. A second – unsuccessful – attempt was made in the years 1940 to 1948.
Does the summer time save electricity?
However, a new study from Switzerland now shows that summertime would also save electricity. According to the Federal Materials Testing and Research Institute (Empa), the reason for this is not the lamps, but the air conditioning systems. Due to the time change in summer, employees leave the office an hour earlier in the afternoon. Since most of the cooling capacity occurs in the late afternoon, energy can be saved, as reported by Empa.
In the study based on data from various office buildings in 15 US cities, the cooling energy of an office building could be reduced by up to almost six percent with the switch to daylight saving time. However, due to the earlier start of work in the morning, up to 4.4 percent more heating energy was consumed.
However, since much more cooling than heating energy is consumed in summer, the time change has a positive impact on the energy balance of a building overall. Across the different climate scenarios and climate zones, the maximum total energy saving was three percent. The results were recently published in the journal “Environmental Research Letters”.
Source: Nachrichten
