France is switching to winter time on October 27, 2024. But why exactly are we moving our hands back?
France changes time again and again in 2024, on the night of this Saturday October 26 to Sunday October 27. That night, the country and a good part of Europe will go back in time. Because the time change follows a very precise mechanism. It is precisely at 3:00 a.m. that you will have to turn back the hands of your clocks since at this precise moment, it will actually be 2:00 a.m. Obviously, everyone is free to make the adjustment whenever they want, the evening before or in the morning when they wake up, or even put it off until the end. While many connected devices will do the job on their own, some equipment like ovens, car clocks, your expensive watch or the clock inherited from grandma will still stay on the old time if you don’t help them a little. little.
But why exactly are we changing the time? The time change measurement was adopted in France in the mid-1970s, for energy and economic reasons. THE oil shock notably encouraged public authorities to introduce summer and winter time, in order to reduce artificial lighting expenses by adapting activity (social, economic) to the brightest times. The system became European several years later and was finally governed by a directive since the 1990s.
The logic of the time change is as follows: by changing the time twice a year, France sets the hours during which public lighting is most in use to the hours when sunshine remains optimal. Thus, from October 27, after the time change in France, it will be daylight earlier in the morning, which allows EDF to make energy savings.
The end of the time change, due to lack of sufficient savings?
According to the latest figures from the Environment and Energy Management Agency (which date back to 2022), the savings made in electricity would be 351 GWh. A figure which represents only 0.07% of our total electricity consumption. And the gains are reduced under the effect of new, more economical technologies (programming tools, low-consumption bulbs, etc.). In 1996, the time change allowed savings of around 1,200 GWh and in 2009, the savings amounted to a further 440 GWh.
The end of the time change was therefore mentioned by the European Union. But this switch to winter time 2024 is not the last. In March 2019, after consultation, the European Parliament adopted a majority project to end the time change, but it will not be implemented for several years. The said draft directive provided for the abolition of rapid time change: to do this, each Member State had to decide between remaining on winter time or remaining on summer time.
The European Parliament had also called for coordination between the Member States and the European Commission so that the application of permanent hours (winter and summer) in the different countries does not disrupt the functioning of the internal market. The directive was to be adopted by the Council at the end of 2020, then transposed by the member states, underlines the official Vie Publique website. But the health crisis linked to Covid-19, Brexit, then the upheavals caused by the war in Ukraine, without forgetting the hesitations of European leaders, put the text very far from the agenda. The latter “should not be discussed in the near future”, concludes the French administration website. A word to the wise.