Countless studies deal with the effects of the borrowed time, which is cut between 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning and returned on the last Sunday of October – when the normal time returns. Whether the consequences of mini-jetlag are really harmful to the long-term health of humans and animals cannot be conclusively proven or disproved. Of course, the drama of the postponed time is individual, for parents of young children, for example, even small changes in pace can be felt longer.
According to studies, the benefit of the time change is equally marginal in relation to the underlying idea of aligning people’s rhythm of life with daylight in summer and, thus, above all, reducing energy consumption through lighting. Since, at least at moderate latitudes, it gets much brighter before most people wake up, there’s only a need for additional lighting in the morning, just before and after the time change, so the theory goes. The energy actually saved is hardly worth the effort, it has been said so far.
Science
A good sleep is more important than a long sleep
New aspect: climate crisis?
However, a new Swiss study suggests this could change in times of climate crisis. According to the Federal Institute of Testing and Research of Materials (Empa), the reason is not the lamps, but the significant increase in the use of air conditioning. Due to the summer schedule change, employees leave the office an hour earlier in the afternoon. Since most of the cooling capacity takes place in the late afternoon, it is possible to save energy, as reported by Empa.
technically simple
From a purely technical point of view, the time shift is hardly worth mentioning: cell phone clocks and time displays on smart home appliances often skip the time automatically. A bigger challenge for many people is converting the digital display in older cars and even more difficult that of the internal clock.
In the study based on data from multiple office buildings in 15 US cities, the cooling power of an office building can be reduced by as much as six percent by switching to daylight saving time. However, due to starting work earlier in the morning, up to 4.4% more heating energy was consumed. However, since much more cooling energy is consumed than heating energy in summer, the time change has a positive impact on the overall energy balance of a building.
Efforts to abolish it came to nothing.
Efforts have been made in recent years to abolish the time change both in North America, where clocks had already switched to daylight saving time two weeks ago, and in the EU. In the United States, attempts to permanently maintain DST with the Sun Protection Act have repeatedly failed in Congress.
And in Europe, too, the debate about the abolition of the time change died down. Five years ago, after 84% of the approximately 4.6 million participants voted in favor of ending the time change in an official EU-wide online poll, the topic became a political issue.
ORF.at/Günther Rosenberger The sun now rises again an hour later – and sets an hour later
In March 2019, the European Parliament then voted by a large majority to abolish the time change by 2021 – or a year later, if there were difficulties for the internal market. Since then, the ball has been in the hands of the EU Council of Ministers, which last discussed the matter in June 2019. Transport ministers are responsible – official Austria prefers a permanent daylight saving time as its timetable standard, a survey in 2018 reached the same result among the population.
Regulation in Austria for over 40 years
Austria only decided to introduce it in 1979 because of administrative problems and because it wanted to harmonize traffic with Switzerland and Germany. These two countries did not introduce DST until 1980. However, DST already existed in Austria during World War I. In 1916, it applied to the monarchy from May 1st to September 30th, but was discontinued. A second – unsuccessful – attempt was made in the years 1940 to 1948.