If you’ve still not quite caught up with British Winter Time and feel it’s not worth the hassle when your days feel ‘off-centre’, then here’s more evidence to back our protest!

‘Turning the clocks back each winter is being blamed for boosting greenhouse gas emissions and adding millions of pounds to power bills, according to a new study!

Elizabeth Garnsey, one of the authors, and a Reader in engineering and business at Cambridge University’s Institute for Manufacturing said, ‘Under GMT, around 35% of the population are asleep when the sun rises in winter and so make no use of the extra daylight and when we come home from school or work in cold and darkness, we cause a surge in demand’.

Darker evenings under GMT cause households to use 2% more electricity, generating millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide, say researchers. ’Britain can only meet these daily surges by switching on less efficient back-up generating plants such as oil-fired powerstations.

The report calculates that, cumulatively, since the re-imposition of GMT (after a three year trial) in 1971, being on GMT+1 in winter could have supplied the population of Greater London with electricity for two years at current consumption rates!

For anyone who’s interested, the paper can be downloaded here

[Brendan Cronin and Elizabeth Garnsey, (19 October 2007), Daylight Saving in GB; Is there evidence in favour of clock time on GMT?]