I listened with interest to the budget speech and was mostly impressed by what was said, especially around tax incentives for investment in sustainable energies such as wind, wave and solar. The Cape region is better positioned to lead in the use of renewable energies than just about anywhere else in the world; what with our abundance of wind, wave and sun.
But in addition to new forms of generation, surely we should be talking more seriously about introducing daylight saving. If people can work out the 2c/kwh levy that has just been introduced then they can certainly work out changing their clocks by an hour twice a year.
The main purpose of daylight saving is to make better use of daylight. It was introduced in the US and UK during World War I, when it was adopted in order to conserve fuel needed to produce electric power. It has been proven that the introduction of daylight saving time does save energy. U.S. Department of Transportation research has shown that daylight saving time trims the entire country's electricity usage by a small but significant amount, about one percent each day, because less electricity is used for lighting and appliances. Similarly, in New Zealand, power companies have found that power usage decreases 3.5 percent when daylight saving starts. In the first week, peak evening consumption commonly drops around five percent.
Energy use and the demand for electricity for lighting homes are directly related to the times when people go to bed at night and rise in the morning. In the average home, 25 percent of electricity is used for lighting and small appliances, such as TVs, VCRs, and stereos. A good percentage of energy consumed by lighting and appliances occurs in the evening when families are home. By moving the clock ahead one hour, the amount of electricity consumed each day decreases. The change to daylight saving time allows the use of less energy in lighting our homes by taking advantage of the longer and later daylight hours.
A study by the U.S. Law Enforcement Assistance Administration found that crime was consistently less during periods of daylight saving time than during comparable standard time periods. Data showed violent crime down 10 to 13 percent. It is clear that for most crimes where darkness is a factor, such as muggings, there are many more incidents after dusk than before dawn, so light in the evening is most welcome.
Interestingly, Namibia is only the third African country to introduce daylight saving time, the others are Tunisia and Egypt. South Africans have been discussing it since before the Boer War, when the Johannesburg mines called for it in order to give mineworkers more daylight recreational time. In 1952 the Johannesburg City Council even passed a motion endorsing its introduction, but it was never instituted, and in 1985 Plettenberg Bay introduced Plett-time, but that was later abandoned due to the difficulties of the time difference between Plett and its neighbouring towns.
After more than a hundred years of debate and discussion, surely there is no better time than the present, with our need to save as much energy as we can, to finally take the leap. Obviously it will take time to get used to it, and government will have to run a massive education campaign, but in the end we would stop wasting valuable daylight. The spin offs for productivity, tourism and much more are so great; what are we waiting for?
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