A new study challenges the long-held argument that daylight-saving time saves energy.

Researchers at the University of California-Santa Barbara found daylight-saving time uses more energy.

This Sunday you’ll have to turn your clocks ahead one hour, but not everyone is happy with the change to daylight-saving time.

“We never should have changed,” said John Sanders. “For 30-some years we never changed time. Now we have to change. It’s just an inconvenience."

But the big argument has always been that it saves energy.

That's why Republican Congressman Fred Upton of Michigan pushed to extend daylight-saving time as part of the Energy Act of 2005.

It’s why we're now turning our clocks ahead earlier in the year and falling back later.

“We used government statistics. There's a study that came out back in the 70s that said that for every day of daylight-saving time, we would save the equivalent of 100,000 barrels of oil a day,” explained Upton.

But a new study puts that into question.

Researchers in California tracked energy use in homes across southern Indiana.

They found after the switch to daylight-saving time, households actually used more energy — $8.6 million more.

Researches say the switch made it hotter later in the day, so as people got home from work they cranked up the air conditioning longer.

It more often happened in the late summer and fall.

“The study, I don't think is very scientific in that it only looked at a couple counties,” said Upton.

Many people WSBT News talked to didn't seem to notice any change in their air conditioning use.

Researchers do point out that they did not study possible social benefits like public health, safety and economic growth.

Upton also points out that not everyone has the same climate as southern Indiana. He doesn't think we'll see any change to daylight- saving time just because of this study.