clipped from: www.usatoday.com   
Study: Daylight saving boosts energy use

For Benjamin Franklin, daylight saving time was about saving candles and for modern lawmakers, it's about electricity — but a recent university study found it might actually cost more energy when the nation resets its clocks Sunday.

We found based on the natural experiment in Indiana that contrary to the conventional wisdom, daylight saving time ... decreases consumption for artificial illumination but increases consumption for heating and cooling.


Another element ... is the social (and economic) cost of pollution emissions. Having to generate more energy for electricity means there is going to be more pollution.