Has daylight saving time fuelled gasoline consumption?

The U.S. government’s plan to save energy by advancing daylight saving time — and the copycat action by Canada — appears to have driven up gasoline consumption as motorists took advantage of the evening daylight to hit the road, a Calgary energy analyst says.

Peter Tertzakian, chief economist at ARC Financial Corp., said the daylight policy is a textbook case of politicians “exacerbating the problems they were originally trying to tackle.”

He said U.S. gasoline demand was growing at a rate of 1.9 per cent prior to the early introduction of daylight saving time, then jumped to a rate of 2.9 per cent, which represents an additional 266,000 barrels a day of crude oil imports.

Globe and Mail