Why working from home could cut your carbon footprint

Working from home has many benefits, both for employees and for the planet. And, according to a recent American study, working remotely can slash an employee’s carbon footprint by up to 54%. The research was conducted by scientists from Cornell University and Microsoft.

They drew on a wealth of data* to compare the carbon footprint of American remote workers with that of their counterparts working on company premises. They found that factors linked to lifestyle and work arrangements influence the environmental impact of each employee, even if working from home remains the least “polluting” organizational mode.

Indeed, travel and office energy use are responsible for the majority of greenhouse gases emitted by employees who do not work remotely.

The researchers found that US employees who work from home all the time can cut their carbon footprint by 54% compared to on-site workers.

Those who work from home two to four days a week can have a carbon footprint 11 to 29% lower than that of their colleagues who commute to the office every day. However, occasional remote working – ie, working from home one day a week – does not have the same environmental benefits.

This reduces workers’ carbon footprint by just 2%.

Non-commute-related travel can become more significant

But that doesn’t mean that working from home has no carbon footprint.

“Remote work is not zero carbon, and the benefits of hybrid work are not perfectly linear. Everybody knows without commuting you save on transportation energy, but there’s always lifestyle effects and many other factors,” said study senior author Fengqi You, professor in energy systems engineering at Cornell, quoted in a news release.

Fengqi You and colleagues found that remote workers tend to travel more for non-business purposes than their on-site colleagues, whether to run errands during their lunch break or to attend a medical appointment between meetings.

This increases their carbon footprint, especially if these journeys are made by car. What’s more, working from home sometimes requires the creation of an extra workspace at home, which can lead to additional residential energy consumption.

This is why the authors of the study encourage business leaders to favour a hybrid organization, combining in-person and remote working, for their teams.

“While remote work shows potential in reducing carbon footprint, careful consideration of commuting patterns, building energy consumption, vehicle ownership, and non-commute-related travel is essential to fully realise its environmental benefits,” the researchers write in their paper. – AFP Relaxnews

*The data used for this research comes from North American surveys such as the American Time Use Survey, the National Household Travel Survey, the Residential Energy Consumption Survey, and Microsoft itself.