I’ve been DST agnostic for a few years now, but this year I’ve been looking at the figures, and I’m calling bullshit. Of course when I say looking at the figures it’s rather an overstatement, it seems to be rather difficult to find any solid data on what exactly the benefits of DST are supposed to be.
The one figure I’ve been able to find estimates that in the Netherlands we save 14 million euros a year on energy thanks to DST. Divided over a population of 16 million that means on average we each save roughly 90 cents a year. Quite frankly I’d rather give up 90 cents than have to adjust the time on watches, clocks etc. twice a year. Hell I’d be willing to pay one or two euros (on top of what I wouldn’t be saving) to get rid of not remembering to adjust my mobile phone’s time twice a year – it usually gets changed one or two weeks after the switch when I realise I haven’t done it yet.
Given that 14 million is also less than 0.01 percent of what the government spends each year it shouldn’t be too hard to collect something like this amount each year, and spend it on (subsidies for) wind farms and solar panels. Which would compensate for the environmental impact of not saving 14 million euros worth of energy. And what’s more we’d get rid of the losses due to reduced productivity after switching to DST, when half the workforce shows up for work tired. I personally guess that this costs more than the 14 million euros we’re saving to begin with.