As a full time remote worker, I can confirm, I’m driving so much less. My commute prior to the pandemic was 18 minutes (12.7 miles one way), so 25 miles round trip with 36 minutes spent driving each work day. My commute was short compared to a lot of other people I worked with who’d drive 45 minutes one way, some 1 hour one way! That’s a lot of driving that can be cut out if the role allows for remote work.
I have a theory about the increase of bad drivers that seems to have happened after the pandemic. So most of the higher paid desk jobs where usually people are more intelligent mostly went to WFH. So there are less intelligent people on the road than there used to be. So now it’s all idiots in cars taking free reign of the roads. Less traffic causes the idiots to be able to more freely speed and run reds. I know since working from home I drive about 90% less and when I do I am scared for my life.
I also eat at home a lot more which has a far lower ecological cost than going out to eat
And healthier, since restaurants tend to go all out on sugar, fat, and salt to make their meals tasty.
I changed mine before a ~1500 mile road trip summer of 2022. Flipped to the percentage (Honda) the other day just out of curiosity and it’s still at 60%, lol. I put so few miles on that thing it’s crazy. I sometimes go a few miles to lunch. Outside that we use it for hardware store runs here and there. I guess I did drive it to a wedding a couple weeks back but that was because I knew we would be parking in a farm field and it’s my only 4 wheel drive vehicle. Probably should change the oil before winter just for good measure.
It’s a good idea to change your oil every 12 months even if you don’t reach the mileage for the maintenance interval. The heat cycles from the engine creates condensation in the engine and the water reacts with the petroleum in the oil and produces some not nice stuff. I haven’t been reaching my interval but my car will still beep at me 30 days before the last oil monitor reset.
People who live in caves all the time cut emissions by 95%.
This is far better: People who live without social media all the time cut emissions by 66%.
In the two weeks since my work mandated three days in the office I’ve spent $150 on gas. Awesome.
Granted part of that reason is the car broke down and I had to drive the truck.
One criticism of WFH is that you’ll have increased energy bills since you’re home all day. Aside from the obvious reasons that’s wrong, this provides hard data showing that WFH is better for the environment in addition to being better for literally everyone except commercial real estate investors.
I would assume it takes far more energy on heating/cooling/ventilation systems for large buildings in general than it does for a series of small buildings that have classic ventilation systems called “windows that open to let in fresh air.” Something that is pretty rare in office buildings.
EDIT: Furthermore, large buildings usually have automated systems that keep it roughly the same temperature throughout the whole building while individuals in their own homes might try to keep heating/cooling bills low by choosing to only heat/cool specific rooms that they’re actually physically using. I know I certainly do this at home, no sense in doing temp control in a room no one is occupying (other than making sure it’s above freezing for pipes, etc.).
I once worked in a high-rise office that would get uncomfortably cold (for me) in winter. I thought they were just being stingy with the heating, until I went into the office on a Saturday and found it was pleasantly warm. Turns out all the computers were keeping the office nice and toasty, and they were actively cooling the place during the winter to keep things at a “business temperature.”
Yeah. Having a laptop and extra monitor on all day at home probably uses less electricity than the fridge.
Ostensibly you could turn down your thermostat during the day to save money, but almost no one does this
This depends greatly on the home and how the home is used for how effective changing the thermostat during the day actually is. You have to keep it mildly in a comfortable temperature range to prevent damage to the home, plus any people or animals at home during the day will reduce the savings available by adjusting the thermostat. There’s also the problem of the fact that if you let the home get too far outside of the desired range the HVAC then has to “catch up” for when you get home which may be enough to not only negate but use more energy and if it just stayed at one set temperature.
All of the increased energy use at home is nothing compared to the energy use of a personal car. My family was able to go down to a single vehicle thanks to hybrid work. Literally an entire car off the road. We live in a rural area where traveling between towns is a requirement and driving your own car is the only way to reliably get between towns, so being a single car family and not missing having a second car is a rare luxury where we live
The main causes of remote workers’ reduced emissions were less office energy use, as well as fewer emissions from a daily commute.
I mean yeah, that makes sense,
But I wonder what the numbers are when it comes to everyone keeping their homes heated/cooled all day compared to communal heating/cooling of a building.
People working at home will increase their personal emissions to keep their home office heated/cooled, and I suspect you get more bang for your energy buck if they are all in one spot instead of spread out into multiple buildings.
So sure… less office energy use, but increased home energy use…
I wonder how the study calculated that or even bothered…
I don’t know about your home and office, but every office I worked in had atrocious heating and cooling. People wear hoodies inside all summer because the AC is set too low.
Yup. You need a work hoodie for summer.
And there’s always that one girl that has a blanket.
Or the lady who keeps bringing in a space heater and plugging it into their computer power strip despite being told repeatedly not to do that
definitely a perk working from home, you decide temperature/sound/etc.
But I’m talking from an overall society energy use perspective.
I’m curious if the energy efficiency of having people in one building compares to the energy efficiency of them spread out.
It will greatly vary, as some are already in apartment buildings sharing that efficiency, some are in better eff rated homes, some are in worse eff rated homes.
Not sure this study can accurately claim 54% … even if they said ±10%, it’s still probably way out to lunch.
Don’t forget about all the useless TVs and monitors running in offices all the time.
And heating/cooling/lighting all the empty rooms.
Plus staff for cleaning and security.
You’re not wrong that it’d be interesting to see some data, but my intuition is offices are extremely wasteful in a lot of ways. I could be wrong though!
I remember reading about a study pre-pandemic that found remote work was greatly better from an emissions standpoint than in-office work and it mostly came down to the massive amounts of resources spent commuting, and if I remember correctly it even found the emissions cost of commuting by public transit to be significant enough to see improvement by remote work
I wonder what the numbers are when it comes to everyone keeping their homes heated/cooled all day compared to communal heating/cooling of a building.
District heating is popular in parts of the world. We could lower emissions caused by commuting and lower emissions due to shitty tiny furnaces.
