Maintaining daylight saving time would save 2.7 billion euros in 2023 on electricity consumption. The figure emerges from the research carried out by the Conflavoro Pmi Study Center to partially amortize the expensive energy that is putting many Italian families and many companies in the country in difficulty.
“Let’s take a practical example: in Rome, when solar time is in effect, on December 21st (the shortest day of the year) the sun sets at 4.42 pm. With the legal one – specifies Roberto Capobianco, president of Conflavoro Pmi – it would become 5.42 pm. It is true that the dawn of the same day would be moved to 8.34, instead of 7.34, but the savings in consumption and electricity would still be greater given that at five in the afternoon most of the work activities are still in full swing ».
By carrying out a spannometric calculation, assuming that in the period in which solar time is in force, daylight saving time is applied (October 30 – March 26, for a total of 147 days), Conflavoro Pmi claims, “one hour of natural light would be purchased at extra day, for a total of 147 hours. Considering the current prices, it would determine in our country savings on energy consumption that could be assumed to be 2.7 billion euros for 2023. This is an estimate based on the latest certain energy needs (data from the operator to 2021) equal to 318.1 billions of renewable KWh included (the first 8 months of 2022 have already recorded an average monthly requirement of 25.9 billion KWh) calculated on the price today in the market protected by Arera, i.e. 0.51 euro / KWh calculated at the moment for the October 2022 “
. Looking at the latest forecasts released by Terna, he notes, “last March, in the summer time period between March and October 2021, therefore before the high energy cost – a saving of over 190 million euros was estimated, thanks to lower energy consumption electricity equal to approximately 420 million kilowatt hours, with a further environmental benefit of a reduction of approximately 200 thousand tons of CO2 ». “Maintaining daylight saving time could therefore certainly help to avoid all those practical emergency measures – concludes Capobianco – such as the reduction of working hours, the early switch-off and delayed switching on of the lighting and, in the worst cases, any disconnections. that companies could find themselves forced to implement in order to buffer the criticalities of the situation. This is why we appeal to the government to evaluate the benefits of this proposal very quickly ”.