By Michelle Werts

I don’t get daylight saving time (DST). For 18 blissful years, my clocks never had to be changed thanks to Indiana’s abstinence from DST. Then, I went to college out of state and received a rude awakening.

I love the extra hours of sunlight in my summer evenings … which is why I equally detest changing my clock in the fall. In the winter, I miss strolling home in the sun. When I leave work tonight, darkness will have already settled over the city. And the UK’s Tourism Alliance says that this is a key detriment to moving back to standard time each winter.

The Tourism Alliance argues that if we remained on DST year round — in essence changing our time zones permanently and no longer changing the clocks twice a year — the fall and spring fringe periods for outdoor activities would be expanded. Outdoor venues, like parks and historic sites, would be more attractive for more weeks in the year with the increased evening sunlight, boosting revenue and the economy. As National Geographic indicates, though, it must not be forgotten that indoor recreation activities, like theater-going, might suffer with more people outdoors.

Year round DST action isn’t limited to our British brethren, though. Earlier this year, The California Energy Commission released a study claiming that moving to year round DST and then creating double daylight saving time (Basically, our time zones would change year round to the time prescribed by DST, but then, as we do now, we’d change our clocks an hour every spring and fall, so in the summer we’d have even more sunshine than we do now.) for the summer months could save the state millions of dollars.

And, at its core, DST has always been about energy savings. Benjamin Franklin indicated it would save candle usage. The U.S. Congress extended DST by a month as part of a 2005 energy bill. But, does it really save energy?

According to some studies, no.

Remember my home state of Indiana? Well, we finally succumbed to DST in 2006, and while this move put us in step with the rest of the country — although sadly making an episode of “The West Wing” no longer relevant — it may have dearly affected our pocketbooks. University of California, Santa Barbara professor Matthew Kotchen released a study in 2008 showing that when Indiana uniformly went to DST, electricity consumption actually rose by one to four percent on average, which equals a few dollars per household per year and totals millions of dollars for the state at large.

According to another 2008 study — this time by University of Washington’s Hendrik Wolff — while energy may be saved in the evening thanks to DST, that gain is lost by extra energy use in the mornings.

So is DST saving us energy? The verdict appears to still be out. Would year round DST boost local economies? Maybe. What I do know for sure is that I’ll be pouting on my walk home in the dark for the next few days, as I ready myself for the long winter months to come.