Countdown to summer time: returns on the night between Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st March, with the hands having to be moved forward one hour.
A painless transition from solar time to summer time and vice versa, and which has negative effects on health, energy, bills, the environment and citizens' pockets, to the point that 336 thousand Italians have already signed the online petition to make summer time permanent all year round .
This was stated by the Italian Society of Environmental Medicine (Sima) which together with Consumerismo Non Profit has started a signature collection to ask the Government for permanent summer time.
"On the energy front - Sima calculated - the adoption of permanent summer time all year round would produce lower energy consumption in our country of around 720 million kWh equivalent, and only the current electricity tariffs on the protected market are considered, resulting in savings in bill of around 180 million euros per year. Added to this would be a massive cut in climate-changing emissions equal to 200,000 tonnes of CO2 less, equivalent to that absorbed by planting 2 to 6 million new trees".
"We ask the Meloni government to commit to definitively abandoning solar time in Italy by adopting summer time all year round. - states the president of Sima Alessandro Miani - A possibility envisaged by the European Union which already in 2019 approved a Directive which puts an end to the double time change during the year, leaving wide discretion to the Member States, hoping for coordination between the various nations to avoid repercussions on trade and cross-border movements".
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