“Americans really do leave their homes when there is more sunlight at the end of the day,” said Michael Downing, a lecturer at Tufts University<br />and the author of “Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time.”<br />“We go to the parks, and we go to the mall, but we don’t walk there,” he said.<br />“For most people, an extra hour of daylight in the evening after work or after school is much more usable<br />than the hour of daylight in the morning,” said David Prerau, the author of “Seize the Daylight.”<br />But since the idea was put in place, it has faced detractors and debate.<br />In 2010, Jeff Miller, the group’s chairman at the time, said the industry had added an estimated $1<br />billion in annual sales since the organization lobbied to add a month to daylight saving in 1986.<br />A Department of Energy report from 2008 found that the extended daylight saving time<br />put in place in 2005 saved about 0.5 percent in total electricity use per day.<br />“Daylight saving increases gasoline consumption.”<br />No one is more aware of that than gas stations, which is why the Association for Convenience<br />and Fuel Retailing, a lobbying group for convenience stores, has pushed to start daylight saving time earlier in the year.
