With only three very simple and concise justifications, then-president Getúlio Vargas instituted daylight saving time in Brazil for the 1st time exactly 90 years ago, on October 3, 1931.
Published 2 days earlier, decree number 20,466 listed that the adoption of the regime was due to the facts that “the summer light saving hour can be adopted to great advantage for the public purse”; “the practice of this measure, already universal, also brings great benefits to the public, as a result of the natural economy of artificial light”; and “the execution of this measure consists only of advancing the hands of the clocks by one hour”.
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So, from 11 am on the 3rd of October of that year until the 31st of March of the following year, the entire national territory was in daylight saving time.
After that, until the 1980s, the measure was inconsistent, with the adoption of the change occurring sparsely, in specific years. Then, from the summer of 1985 to 2018, it became the norm — finally being regulated by Decree 6558, of 2008, under the government of then President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Without going into justifications, the text of the law only regulated that “summer time” it should take place from the 3rd Sunday of the month of October, until the 3rd of February. With one exception: “in the year in which there is a coincidence between the Sunday scheduled for the end of summer time and Carnival Sunday, the end of summer time will take place on the following Sunday”.
Extinction of daylight saving time
However, the modus operandi of contemporary life itself raised arguments about the real effectiveness, for the present day, of this change in watches. Whether because of the current configuration of work environments, virtually independent of natural lighting and with appliances such as air conditioning turned on all the time, or because of new technologies, with LED lamps that consume very little energy, specialists started to weigh whether the small savings obtained with the adoption of specific hours was worth considering the social cost.
And, in the polarized Brazil of recent years, the clash also reached the political arena. Still in the electoral campaign, current president Jair Bolsonaro defended the extinction of daylight saving time. And it actually did, by decree 9772, of April 2019.
The matter seemed closed. But, in the biggest water crisis in recent times, when any economy seems welcome, the issue has come back to the fore. In September, the Ministry of Mines and Energy even asked the National Electric System Operator (ONS) for a study on the measure.
A recent survey of the Datasheet found that 55% of Brazilians are in favor of going back to daylight saving time, compared to 38% who are against it. Behind the scenes, there is pressure from business sectors to adopt the model, given the fear that Brazil, deeply dependent on energy from the hydroelectric matrix, will soon face blackouts.
However, last Thursday (09/30), the Minister of Mines and Energy, Bento Albuquerque, stated that the government will not resume daylight saving time. In an interview during the inauguration of a thermoelectric plant, he said that the same “it is not necessary”.
Pros and cons
Among specialists heard by DW Brazil, there is no consensus. For economist Nivalde de Castro, from the Electric Sector Study Group at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), in a scenario of energy crisis, “whatever the reduction in consumption will help to avoid the need to impose selective cuts at the time of greatest demand, precisely at dusk”.
This period is considered a peak period because it is when there is a confluence between commercial and industrial consumption — whose activities have not yet ceased — and domestic consumption — with the arrival of people in their homes and the use of electric showers, light bulbs and appliances in general.
“At this moment, any reduction in demand is extremely important, and daylight saving time allows, on average, a saving of 3% in electricity consumption”, says the economist.
Physicist Fábio Raia, a professor at Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, believes that the eventual savings provided by daylight savings time are “little” and does not justify the social disturbances caused by the measure.
“When daylight saving time was first adopted, energy was rare, expensive and scarce. And the means of production relied heavily on natural lighting, people worked in factories with natural light coming from the windows”, scores.
“Today, the rhetoric of saving energy is still valid, but it has become ridiculous. LED lamps have very low consumption. Houses, stores and industries are closed, they have tinted windows, air conditioning… Inside these places you don’t even know if it’s night or day outside, no big office works with open windows.”
Raia says the issue turned into another “political positioning than an energy discussion”. “Energy savings today are made with other policies, in other ways, and not with daylight saving time”, comments.
He recognizes, however, that the advantage of adopting the format still exists when thinking about shifting peak hours.
This is the main point defended by economist Diogo Lisbona Romeiro, a researcher at the Center for Studies in Regulation and Infrastructure of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV). Because what happens is that at these times when there is greater demand, hydroelectric plants need to run at their maximum capacity.
“As the reservoirs are very low [por causa da estiagem histórica], emptied, the hydroelectric plants end up using more water to generate the same potential [de energia], since with less waterfall they are less productive”, he explains. By reducing this simultaneous consumption, displacing the peak hour, the mechanism “reduces the peak, responding to the current challenge which is to reduce the level of emptying of the reservoirs”.
“But daylight saving time won’t do it [o problema], will not save the crisis. [Se restabelecido] it would be one more additional measure. That it could have some contribution, however small”, emphasizes the economist.
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