As the clock strikes midnight on the last Friday of April 2024, Egyptians push the clock forward by 60 minutes, so that the country can resume working according to summer time (daylight saving time) after a hiatus that lasted for more than 7 years.
The official government decision has revived the debate between supporters and opponents of implementing the summer time system, about the advantages and disadvantages of this timing, but what is certain is the futility of any change if people’s habits and lifestyles do not change.
The question here is... Benefits for whom and harms against whose interest?
The answer, of course, is humans, and this may seem logical and legitimate, but what about the interest of the environment in which this human lives, so that it can withstand the depletion of resources and pollution, and accordingly, humans find a suitable place for life so that they can live whether in summer or winter time?
Variation of daylight hours
First of all, why does the phenomenon of daylight hours vary during the seasons of the year? It increases in summer and decreases in winter.
Due to the tilt of the Earth's axis by 23.5 degrees, when the Earth revolves around the sun, one of the hemispheres (northern or southern) tilts or approaches toward the sun. Summer comes in this hemisphere, and the day becomes much longer than the night because it enjoys sunlight for a long time, and with rotation it reverses. This situation occurs in the winter.
How did daylight saving time begin and
why
?
The idea began in 1784 with the American “Benjamin Franklin” called for individuals to wake up early in order to take advantage of sunlight in the summer, and thus save energy, but it remained an abstract theory and did not come into effect until during World War I, when Germany decided to push the clock forward for the first time in the summer with the aim of saving energy so that it could be used in weapons factories, Britain and many European countries followed suit.
Since that time, daylight saving time has been adopted or canceled according to the needs of each country, especially since the energy crisis in the seventies of the twentieth century, as the major industrialized countries faced a severe shortage of oil, in addition to its high prices, the solution was to reduce energy consumption through the daylight saving system.
The United States adopted daylight saving time in 1966. It begins every year on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November, meaning it lasts 34 weeks, about two-thirds of the year.
In 1996, all European Union countries agreed to alternate between winter and summer time simultaneously in the same period, starting from the last Sunday in March until the last Sunday in October.
With the adoption of daylight saving time in a number of countries around the world, this leads us to the basic question: Is the summer system considered “environmentally sustainable” and saves energy consumption?
The purpose of moving forward the clock is to start work and social life times earlier in order to make optimal use of daylight hours, which gradually increases at the beginning of spring until the peak of summer, and thus the requirements for artificial lighting, heating, industrial production, and of course energy utilization decrease. Also, increasing daylight hours helps reduce traffic and transportation and thus carbon emissions because the pressure is distributed over a greater time during the day.
Daylight saving time in numbers
In 2019, the European Parliament approved a proposal to cancel the change to daylight saving time. Italy rejected the European Union’s decision and insisted on keeping the daylight saving time system in effect for 7 months a year, as Italians have been accustomed to for about 60 years.
The Italian media discussed the electrical, environmental and economic benefits of daylight saving time, which were translated into numbers with the report of the Terna Authority, which is responsible for managing the national electricity transmission network in the country.
The authority announced that electricity consumption from 2004 to 2021 decreased by about 10.5 billion kilowatt hours due to daylight saving time, equivalent to more than 1.8 billion euros in economic terms.
According to the Authority's estimates, Italy saves more than 190 million euros during the seven months in which the summer system is in effect, thanks to reducing electricity use by approximately 420 million kilowatt hours, which is sufficient for the average annual needs of about 150,000 families.
Commenting on the previous report, the President of the Italian Society of Environmental Medicine, “Alessandro Miani”, said in statements to the Italian newspaper “il sole 24 ore” that the energy savings resulting from the adoption of daylight saving time reduces about 200 thousand tons of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere annually, which is equivalent to the same benefit we get from planting two million trees.
“Maiani” called for applying daylight saving time permanently because obtaining an extra hour of light and solar heat daily enables the world to confront the energy crisis and mitigate the effects of climate change, as a large part of the world still depends on fossil sources for energy production.
If these are its benefits, why do some Europeans want to abolish daylight saving time?
Italian reports stated that those who reject the daylight saving system are citizens of Nordic countries such as Finland, who do not benefit from the time change and it does not have any advantage for them.
As a result of the tilt of the Earth's axis, we find that the amount of solar radiation that penetrates to any place on the Earth varies depending on the timing or seasonal season and geographical location.
Therefore, the effect of daylight saving time varies greatly from one region to another depending on latitude. For example, you may not need daylight saving time in remote locations north and south of the Earth, because the days are very long or vice versa.
In the Nordic countries, moving the clock forward by 60 minutes will not leave a noticeable impact on the length of daylight hours, because they already enjoy very long hours of light in the summer due to their location and do not need additional time.
In southern countries, such as Italy, daylight saving time actually lengthens the day, so that sunset in Rome during June reaches around 9 PM.
This is what happened in Italy, one of the closest European countries to the North African region geographically, and it seems that what it announced about the positive economic impact of daylight saving time is in line with what was stated in the technical and scientific studies presented by the Egyptian Ministry of Electricity to the Parliament in order to report on the draft law, which stated that the amount of savings resulting from implementing the legal clock in Egypt is about 147.21 million Egyptian pounds, which consequently means rationalization of use.
Daylight saving time can achieve environmental sustainability by reducing consumption, conserving energy resources, and reducing emissions resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels that pollute the environment. Therefore, it is not just adding an extra hour to the day.
