We were honoured when our Climate Safety report, with its recommendation to cut UK emissions 10% by 2010, helped inspire Franny Armstrong to create the 10:10 campaign.
PIRC was asked by 10:10 in autumn 2009 to put together a study of policies that could help reduce UK emissions by 10% in one year – looking beyond individual or company actions to political interventions that Government might make.
One of our range of proposals was to reform Daylight Savings time in order to better align our hours of activity with hours of daylight – thereby saving electricity and hence cutting emissions. This was an idea that others greater than ourselves had previously hit upon, but had been unfairly forgotten of late. We were delighted when 10:10 took up the suggestion and turned it into Lighter Later, which launched in March 2010. It attracted immediate media attention and elicited support from all the main political parties in the run-up to the General Election. As of early November, Lighter Later had attracted the support of a broad coalition of 65 organisations championing its multiple social, environmental and economic benefits, as well as over 30,000 signatories from members of the public petitioning the Prime Minister.
For more details on the benefits that changing the clocks would bring, check out the Lighter Later website.
