Time change: the switch to winter time, but what is it for ?

France is switching to winter time on October 27, 2024. But why are we moving our clocks back exactly??

France is changing time again and again in 2024, on the night of this Saturday 26th to Sunday 27th October. 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 at 3:00 in the morning very precisely that it will be necessary to move the hands of its clocks back since at this precise moment, it will in reality be 2:00. Of course, everyone is free to change the setting whenever they want, the night before or in the morning when they wake up, or even put it off indefinitely. While many connected devices will do the job by themselves, some equipment such as ovens, car clocks, your expensive watch or the clock you inherited from grandma will, however, remain at the old time if you don't help them a little.

But why do we change the time exactly? ? The measurement of the time change was adopted in France in the mid-1970s, for energy and economic reasons. The oil crisis in particular prompted the public authorities to introduce summer and winter time, in order to reduce expenditure on artificial lighting by adapting activity (social, economic) at the brightest times. The system became European several years later and has finally been governed by a directive since the 1990s.

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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 demand at the hours when sunshine remains optimal. Thus, at From October 27th, after the time change in France, it will be light earlier in the morning, which allows EDF to save energy.

The end of the time change, due to insufficient 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 that represents only 0.07% of our total electricity consumption. And the gains are reduced by the effect of new, more economical technologies (programming tools, low-energy light bulbs, etc.). In 1996, changing the time allowed savings of around 1,200 GWh and in 2009, the savings still amounted to 440 GWh.

The end of the time change has therefore been mentioned by the European Union. But this switch to winter time in 2024 is not the last. In March 2019, after consultation, the European Parliament adopted a project by a majority to end the time change, but it will not be implemented for several years. The draft directive provided for the elimination of the rapid time change: to do this, each Member State had to decide whether to stick to winter time or stick to summer time.

The European Parliament had also argued 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 website Vie Publique. But the health crisis linked to Covid-19, Brexit, then the upheavals caused by the war in Ukraine, not to mention the hesitations of European leaders, have 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.