WFH Can More Than 1/2 employee's carbon emissions

[pixy0stix]

Working Remotely Can More Than Halve an Office Employee’s Carbon Footprint

www.scientificamerican.com/article/working-remotely-can-more-than-halve-an-office-employees-carbon-footprint/


Lots of caveats though.

[macmars45]

H's company went fully remote for good back in 2020. We have solar panels that completely power our all electric house year round and drive EVs. My work in a 4 minute drive and I drive my EV. So for us we are carbon neutral (in those regards).

We are not the norm because solar panels and EVs can be cost prohibitive. The only reason we could afford all that ourselves is selling a TH in the Seattle area and buying in a cheaper area while H still makes Seattle wages. We have lots of privilege too.

[aurora]

Caveats, indeed!

Now I'm trying to assess is I really use my dishwasher more often when WFH. I guess maybe a bit, if I'm eating food I prepare myself? But still that seems less carbon intensive than getting takeout from a restaurant near work (with throwaway containers). Otherwise maybe I'm running it at a different time of day, which is perhaps good for the planet if I have solar and am not maxing my AC but bad if I'm running it when the grid is at peak capacity.

This stuff is definitely complicated. Yet another reason why we need government leadership in addition to making good choices individually.

[msmerymac]

We don't have a dishwasher. I definitely make food at home more often now that H and I are both fully remote and have been for 3.5 years. And with our CSA and freezer of local meats I feel okay about our food carbon footprint, though I'd still like to reduce grocery plastics and waste. Our energy bills did go up, and I had to buy a combo space heater/stand-alone AC for my home office to make it comfortable, but in May we got a heat pump installed in our house. Our bills this summer have been around the same as last summer - not as high as the highest month, though - but the entire house is very comfortable, so it's much more efficient now.

@@@
We joke that our baby is the only one who commutes since she goes to daycare. Her school is about 10 minutes away, so we're driving around 16 miles total each weekday for that, the equivalent of one of us commuting, really. But we've also gone down to one family car, so the maintenance, etc, is less and better? We'd love to switch to EV or at least hybrid with our next car. We also have the opportunity to run more errands during the day, but we often combine that with daycare, so for example, H went to the vet to get some medication for the cats after drop-off this morning.

[StrawberryBlondie]

Re: errands - I definitely run the occasional errands during the day when I WFH but it's not like I wouldn't run that errand anyway after work. Usually it's something like I realized I forgot to pick something up at the grocery store for dinner or I ran out of deodorant or something. So I still definitely drive less when I WFH.

[scm1011]

Sept 21, 2023 8:44:48 GMT -5 aurora said:

Caveats, indeed!

Now I'm trying to assess is I really use my dishwasher more often when WFH. I guess maybe a bit, if I'm eating food I prepare myself? But still that seems less carbon intensive than getting takeout from a restaurant near work (with throwaway containers). Otherwise maybe I'm running it at a different time of day, which is perhaps good for the planet if I have solar and am not maxing my AC but bad if I'm running it when the grid is at peak capacity.

This stuff is definitely complicated. Yet another reason why we need government leadership in addition to making good choices individually.

I had this thought when reading, too. I commuted via public transport so my footprint in that aspect was low, but I think the biggest change is a drastic drop in consumerism. In my office days, I frequently got take-out or browsed in the downtown stores on my lunch break and bought crap I didn't need. In that aspect, my envt footprint has definitely improved. Any errands I run during the day are on foot or via bike so I think its definitely a net positive in my case having converted to full-time WFH.

[redheadbaker]

Now that summer is over, I go three or four days in a row without using my car. We do use AC and a dishwasher, but our house runs cool, so our AC is set to 76 when it's on.

And luckily, our suburb is very walkable -- locally owned coffee shop, a (small) movie theater, the train station, an independent book store, the hair salon I go to are all in walking distance. And getting even more walkable soon -- a new grocery store is being built three blocks away

[wawa]

I haven't read the actual paper this is talking about, but it sounds like one thing they didn't discuss or measure (and measuring this would be hard) is the ways that WFH is supportive of a generally car-lite or car free lifestyle, which is usually a lot less resource intensive. For most people, the commute isn't their main source of vehicle miles, but it is their longest regular trip. People don't drive 20 miles one way to a grocery store if they live in a populated area. But they'll drive that far for work daily. So it generally controls their decisions about car ownership - and when you HAVE a car, you're more likely to drive everywhere because it's there and it's easy.

If we take the commute trip out of the equation, places like where I live, which is FIRMLY suburban, become a lot more feasible for a car-lite life especially for a two-income family who would otherwise have two cars. I can walk to a park, various @ destinations, a library, my hair salon, a corner store, and a few restaurants and could easily bike to the grocery store. (at 1.5ish miles I could walk, but that'd be a long walk back with a bag or two of groceries. the other places are all well under .5 miles) If I worked from home full time, we could probably manage just fine with a single vehicle. IF MH also worked from home, we DEFINITELY could.

But working from home doesn't immediately lead to that kind of lifestyle shift - it just enables it. People have to want to do it up front.

[wawa]

oh, now that I've read the study summary itself, some fascinating stuff.
1 - apparently at least one study's worth of data suggests that remote workers are MORE likely to own more vehicles. I'd posit that this is the same effect that results in hybrid workers who only go in one or two days a week having longer commutes. People are making different housing decisions when they aren't tied to an office location in a traditional CBD. So people who don't have to be near an office are less likely to choose to live in a dense transit accessible area where owning a car can be more of a pain in the ass than it's worth, so they're going to have a number of vehicles=number of adults+x in the home situation rather than just having a single vehicle for the household, or none. This goes back to what I was saying about WFH doesn't lead to less car ownership, it just enables it for the people who already leaned that way but don't have a work/housing situation that let's them rely on active modes or transit for a commute.

2 - Also the fact that WFH people spend all day driving around is hilarious. THIS IS WHY GRUMPY PEOPLE THINK WFH PEOPLE AREN'T GETTING ANYTHIGN DONE. we're not. we're out running errands.

3 - the effect they showed with a single WFH day being a lot more likely to have long commutes and run a bunch of car errands I think backs up what I was saying in my prior post - one day a week doesn't free you enough from your commute to think about dropping a car and making substantial lifestyle shifts that go with that. it just gives you a day sleep for an extra half hour instead of driving.

[bugandbibs]

For me, inertia plays a big factor here. On days when I’m home, I don’t want to get dressed for the outside and I don’t go out if I don’t have to. On days when I work, I will run every errand I can on the way home because I’m already out.

Having solar panels installed a few years ago and having an app that monitors our usage has helped us really reign in our electrical usage even though someone is literally home almost 24/7. I thought I was good before, but it’s helped us refine things.

[Deleted]

Sept 22, 2023 8:50:30 GMT -5 wawa said:

oh, now that I've read the study summary itself, some fascinating stuff.
1 - apparently at least one study's worth of data suggests that remote workers are MORE likely to own more vehicles. I'd posit that this is the same effect that results in hybrid workers who only go in one or two days a week having longer commutes. People are making different housing decisions when they aren't tied to an office location in a traditional CBD. So people who don't have to be near an office are less likely to choose to live in a dense transit accessible area where owning a car can be more of a pain in the ass than it's worth, so they're going to have a number of vehicles=number of adults+x in the home situation rather than just having a single vehicle for the household, or none. This goes back to what I was saying about WFH doesn't lead to less car ownership, it just enables it for the people who already leaned that way but don't have a work/housing situation that let's them rely on active modes or transit for a commute.

2 - Also the fact that WFH people spend all day driving around is hilarious. THIS IS WHY GRUMPY PEOPLE THINK WFH PEOPLE AREN'T GETTING ANYTHIGN DONE. we're not. we're out running errands.

3 - the effect they showed with a single WFH day being a lot more likely to have long commutes and run a bunch of car errands I think backs up what I was saying in my prior post - one day a week doesn't free you enough from your commute to think about dropping a car and making substantial lifestyle shifts that go with that. it just gives you a day sleep for an extra half hour instead of driving.

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I think many parents who WFH are still doing school drop-off/pick-up, and are still driving their kids to activities. I work at an office 90% of the time, but on the days I do
WFH I’m still battling the carpool line, driving my kid to soccer practice, driving to medical appointments.

However, my parents are a different story. One is retired and one is 100% WFH, and they can go two weeks without driving a car even though they live in the middle of nowhere.

I think you’re correct that WFH allows people to move out of denser urban areas where housing is expensive, to more rural areas where the COL is lower, but there isn’t enough transit to exist without a car.