The government has confirmed that clocks will not go forward by one hour at midnight on Sunday 18th October. President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner withdrew the plan at the last minute after the majority of provinces rejected the measure to introduce an early change to daylight savings time as part of of an effort to save energy. Sixteen announced that they definitely would not be adjusting their clocks, meanwhile others including Buenos Aires and Capital Federal remained undecided.
The measure was initially put forward by the Energy Secretary and was sanctioned in December 2007. At the time it was met with considerable controversy. The scheme was initially tested out last year in several provinces and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner finally approved it after official studies suggested that the energy saving was substantial, estimating it to be between five and seven percent.
Private investigations, however, put the figure at between 0.5 and 1.5 percent. Furthermore the Minister for Planning, Julio De Vido, has declared the measure “unnecessary” because “all resources are at 90 percent” of their energy generation capacity.
This process has been so very confusing. Personally, I wish that it was daylight savings time all year round so that sunset was always as late as possible.
Good to know Rachel. I had no idea the whole day and didn’t find out until just recently.
-Jon
Una vez mas Cristina nos ofrece su ‘bipolaridad’ un minuto antes.Tal vez deberiamos pensar en que si Ella no quiere hacer terapia, Nosotros (38 millones de argentinos) hagamos una ‘terapia de grupo’ por Ella..Understand? (gracioso y triste a la vez) Saludos! — @tweetsandseo –
In my opinion any percentage of energy saving is good news regardless of how it comes about. Some notice would have been nice though !