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On Sunday, across most of Canada, the clocks lurch forward, dragging us out of bed with them. In addition to being unpleasant for anyone who requires sleep to function, the annual ritual of sacrificing an hour to daylight saving time is accompanied by many ill effects, including a spike in fatal car crashes, strokes and heart attacks.
The downsides are clear. The upsides? Not so much. In theory, daylight time was implemented to save energy, by extending afternoon sunshine to decrease the use of artificial lighting. The notion is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who suggested — perhaps unseriously — that a time shift could reduce reliance on the “smoaky [sic] unwholesome and enormously-expensive light of candles” in the long evenings. However, attempts to quantify this benefit have yielded ambiguous results.
Unlike many of his other inventions — bifocals, odometers, flexible urinary catheters — Franklin never self-administered this particular idea. More than a century after he died and a full decade before it caught on as a wartime measure, the Ontario town of Port Arthur (now part of Thunder Bay) pioneered the implementation of daylight time in 1908, at the urging of a local businessman with a passion for long summer nights. That’s right — Canadians only have ourselves to blame for this one.
Most of Canada now observes daylight time in synchronization with the United States. Confusingly, there are exceptions — Yukon and Saskatchewan don’t change the clocks, and neither do some regions of British Columbia, Quebec and Nunavut. These abstentions underscore the fact that the ritual is arbitrary.
Aside from being very popular with candy companies, who profit from the prolonged trick-or-treating that accompanies lighter Halloween nights, the lingering promise of daylight time is that of an environmental benefit. So when most Canadians wake up an hour earlier than we’d like to this weekend, can we comfort ourselves by knowing our suffering is in service of the Earth?
The basic principle of daylight time is straightforward: if human activity is concentrated during daylight hours, and rest during darkness, the use of artificial light is reduced. However, the sun doesn’t rise and set at the same time everywhere. This Sunday, following the time change, the sun will come up at 7:17 a.m. in Montreal, but not until 8:02 a.m. in Edmonton. If you wake up in darkness, you turn on the lights — possibly negating the energy savings later in the day.
Blake Shaffer, an economist at the University of Calgary, attempted to analyze these factors together by looking at both the sunlight hours and human activity at different times of day. On average, for example, his model suggested that Albertans — who overall have late sunrises and are the earliest risers — increase their energy demands during daylight time by 1.5 per cent. In Manitoba and New Brunswick, energy use also goes up. For every ten minutes less of morning sunlight, Shaffer writes, “DST increases electricity demand by 0.2 per cent to 0.6 per cent.” Only Ontario showed a significant reduction in energy use as a result of the time change, of roughly one per cent.
For most of the year, when the sun rises early and sets late, daylight time has even less effect. In other words, during the periods of transition — March and November, when mornings are dark — daylight time is often making things just a little bit worse than they need to be, for both people and the planet.
Other forms of energy consumption are less affected by the time change: we make coffee in the morning and turn up the heat when it’s chilly, regardless of how bright it is outside. (According to Natural Resources Canada, appliances and heating comprise a far greater share of our energy costs than lighting.)
Nic Rivers, a professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, analyzed 12 years of energy data from Ontario to examine the effect of the time change. His 2016 analysis, like Shaffer’s, found the time change did reduce energy demand in Ontario by around 1.5 per cent. But while he found real — if small — benefits, he acknowledged that they’ve likely diminished.
“The kinds of lights we were using a century ago, when this was started, were very different from the kinds of lights we’re using now,” Rivers says, adding that analysis, which looked at Ontario energy demand between 2002 and 2014, would probably be very different today. In 2009, just seven per cent of Canadian households were using energy-efficient light emitting diodes (LEDs), compared to more than half of households by 2021.
“Our light bulbs use like a tenth of the energy they did a generation ago. And so one of the things we do is light more — we light more stuff up. But we spend less on lighting than we used to, and lighting is a much smaller part of our energy consumption now.”
Another possible energy benefit attributed to daylight time is related to cooling: shifting the day allows many people to arrive at their office at a cooler hour of the morning, and leave before the hottest part of the afternoon, reducing the energy expended on temperature control. However, while many Canadians have returned to the office, far more of us are still working from home than we did a decade ago. Others can attest that their workplaces seem to blast air conditioning regardless of ambient temperature or employee comfort, while others — such as those working in many public schools — have no access to reliable air conditioning, even when the temperatures reach dangerous highs.
While climate change and human activity are likely shaping energy demands, Rivers wasn’t sure they would have much of an impact on daylight saving time, as the shifts occur in March and November, when morning and evening temperatures in Canada are quite low. In the summer, when temperatures peak and the days are long, it’s hard to determine whether the timing of sunrise and sunset would have any meaningful effect.
And while increasing energy efficiency and decreasing energy consumption are important measures for addressing climate change, the effects of daylight time are small — and likely to get smaller. In the long run, whether we’re on daylight time or not doesn’t make much of a difference.
“The original rationale, as an energy saving measure, when we were burning coal and candles — it’s kind of been left behind. Not that it does nothing, but it’s not big compared to the other pros and cons of this policy.”
B.C. and Ontario have already voted to do away with the time change and stay on permanent daylight time, pending agreement from neighbouring states to the south. (Quebec, which also has to get on board for Ontario to make the change, is exploring the idea in a public consultation, while the Atlantic provinces have also explored the possibility.)
On Wednesday, when asked by The Narwhal whether his outlook had shifted on the issue, B.C. Premier David Eby replied, “You’re right to point out that my usual response to this is that our biggest trading partner and group of people that we want to stay in sync with has not yet changed their clocks. But yeah, it’s open to the new world that we’re in, that we stand on our own two feet as a province, in relation to everything, including time zones.” He added that he would “ponder that one.”
Seeking alignment with neighbouring states seemed sensible even a few weeks ago. But as Canada’s long friendship with the U.S. rapidly deteriorates, why wait? Our decades-long trade relationship has already splintered, so why not our time zones? Canadian leaders have the rare opportunity to take a swift, decisive action that would have a tangible benefit for their citizens: just a little more rest in an increasingly exhausting world. Wouldn’t that be a nice reality to wake up to for a change?
– With files from Shannon Waters
Get the inside scoop on The Narwhal’s environment and climate reporting by signing up for our free newsletter. On Sunday, across most of Canada, the...
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