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The cost of commuting on the environment is extremely high. We should be offering incentives to companies to switch to remote work. If 20% of jobs permanently s

The cost of commuting on the environment is extremely high. We should be offering incentives to companies to switch to remote work. If 20% of jobs permanently switched to remote, the impact on carbon emissions would be immediate, and extremely positive.

ctvo 5y ago
Sources please. Edit: The OP makes an extraordinary claim about remote work and reduction in CO2. I would assume members of HN would be intellectually curious enough to want to dig deeper.
- judge2020 5y ago
  https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle#:~:text=typical%20passenger%20vehicle%3F-,A%20typical%20passenger%20vehicle%20emits%20about%204.6%20metric%20tons%20of,around%2011%2C500%20miles%20per%20year https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t.... > A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. > This assumes the average gasoline vehicle on the road today has a fuel economy of about 22.0 miles per gallon and drives around 11,500 miles per year.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    22mpg sounds like fleet average. I don't think the average commuter who could work from home is getting 22mpg, probably close to 30 average. I don't think the frequency of trucks and vans relative to cars and crossovers is not high enough within those demographics to drag down the average that far. I'd pad the estimate for carbon saved and say like 3.5ton/yr per work from home employee.
    - alistairSH 5y ago
      My Honda gets about 20mpg. My BMW about 25mpg. Maybe I'm the exception that proves the rule, but I seriously doubt 30mpg is remotely close to average (for office workers) in the US. Edit - The Ford F-150 is the best selling "car" in the US by a long shot. That isn't all fleet sales - a significant number of normal people own trucks for one reason or another (myself included - Honda Ridgeline).
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        Practically every ~10yo or newer sedan, wagon and "wagon pretending to be a crossover" you see is going to get nearly 30mpg (or more). You need a heck of a lot of 10-15mpg vehicles to drag the fleet average down to 22. Most white collar employees who own trucks aren't commuting in them and even then there's more people commuting in 40+mpg subcompacts and hybrids so it should more than balance out. Look at a high class parking garage, 22mpg just doesn't pencil out. 28-30mpg sounds believable.
        CydeWeys 5y ago
        You're vastly underestimating just how many people own massive inefficient pickup trucks and SUVs that they use for every trip. Maybe you happen to live in a part of the country where this problem isn't particularly bad, but the other parts of the country are driving that average down.
        throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        You're not understanding. The commuting miles saved by working from home is not going to be a cross section of the commuting population and the bits that are over-represented are going to be the white collar employees who skew toward more efficient vehicles so you have to pad the fuel economy or carbon estimates to reflect that.
        vel0city 5y ago
        I look in high class parking garages around me, and easily 1/3 of the cars are giant pickup trucks. Around here, tons of people will regularly buy a giant cab truck with a 6ft bed they'll mostly use to commute to an office job. Welcome to Texas.
    - shagie 5y ago
      In a different thread, I found https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=40076 https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=40076 as a useful way of looking at CO2. That's got the Honda Fit as that's the one that was in discussion previously. Its a 33mpg car and the 'energy and environment' tab puts it at 4.4 tons/year. I've got a 2009 Honda Insight. > Fuel cost estimates assume national average fuel prices and assume you drive 15,000 miles each year, 45% under highway driving conditions (steady speeds with little or no stopping) and 55% in city driving (low speeds with lots of stopping). Noting that I'm not the typical home worker, but I went from an average of 600 miles/month (7200 miles/year) to 30 miles/month over the past year and a half. This took my carbon footprint for driving from 1.7 T/y to 0.1 T/y. The flip side of this number is (for me) that I went from heating the house only a few hours a day in the winter to heating or cooling one room to comfortable. I don't have good numbers on my electrical footprint change. This would again be different with different life circumstances (number of other people in the house, size of house / apartment, etc...)
- swader999 5y ago
  You really need sources to decide that reducing commuting is a good idea for the environment?
  - bombcar 5y ago
    The question is what affect it would have. If it’s minuscule compared to a single bulk cargo freighter it may just be window dressing and greenwashing. If it would reduce 20% of all energy usage worldwide it would hugely significant.
    - gowld 5y ago
      Commute less and also buy less junk.
  - inputvolch 5y ago
    No, I'd imagine they need a source that the cost is "extremely high". Are you being purposely disingenuous by reframing the question?
    - swader999 5y ago
      I guess I just get my fur up about the "Sources" demand I see more and more these days. It feels like it is used to stop meaningful discussion on a topic.
  - ctvo 5y ago
    I need sources on two claims: > The cost of commuting on the environment is extremely high. Reasonable, but source please so I can learn more. > If 20% of jobs permanently switched to remote, the impact on carbon emissions would be immediate, and extremely positive. A more extraordinary claim. I also need sources to learn more.
    - what-the-grump 5y ago
      Would like sources and measurement as well however, just in NYC the lockdown had a significant impact on the nature around the city, the air was clean. Unfortunately we are back to precovid traffic levels.
- adolph 5y ago
  As a natural experiment, observe the affect of C19 on the transportation sector in this chart: https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/?tbl=T02.01#/?f=M https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/?tbl=T02.01#/?f... Granted an unknown portion of the reduced transportation was decreased economic activity, so presumably the affect of permanent remote work would be smaller.
CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
Yes but that isn't typically how the value-cost balance between employee and employer works, unless there is regulation in play. Working from home is a benefit which many people would be willing to trade X% salary for. This is just market forces at work. I've been curious how the market for remote work would play out - I'm especially interested in knowing what X ends up being.
- eru 5y ago
  But: if you can add a benefit that employees value a lot at zero or negative cost to the company, competition will go that way. No need for regulation in this regard: greed will do the work. Of course, if the cost to companies is positive, things are less clear cut. If you want any regulation here, the boring standard econ answer applies: a carbon tax.
  - CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
    Yes one of the most interesting bits of information we will get from the market forces of remote work is seeing how much value being in the office brings to an employer. Obviously this will vary by industry, but if we see huge differences in salary between in-office and remote employees, then that means companies are willing to pay that premium to some people to be in the office. If there is no/little difference in salary, then I think it would be fair to assume that the value of in-office work to employers is negligible. These types of things are rarely this simple though, so I'm going to hold off on having any strong opinions.
    - eru 5y ago
      I agree. I suspect that there are investments with large fixed costs companies can make to make remote productivity go up. (Not so much investments in eg actual hardware, but eg in how you set up team processes.) That would explain heavy pushback from companies before the pandemic, but also that things seem to be running ok now.
Raphael_Amiard 5y ago
I'm used to the conversation in here being extremely US-centric, but realize that this is much less true for European cities with good public transportation. I haven't ever used a car to go to work in my life. I'm also very concerned about this better world where people stay home to save the planet. The common level of social interactions in the modern world is already low enough in my opinion. EDIT: It rarely happens this way but in retrospect I feel my comment is way too tame. You think your problem is going to work. The problem is the whole american lifestyle where you live in an individual house and need a car to do anything, your house is an ecological disaster in terms of how much energy you need to keep it warm/cold, and even bringing food to your house will incur a large carbon footprint. I know the system is hard to changes, but some people need to see the bigger picture, even if you can't do anything about it yet.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  > good public transportation. Public transportation has a higher environment cost than staying at home to work. That should be fairly obvious.
  - easytiger 5y ago
    This reductive argument is rather tiresome. All human activity has a cost. Humans are social beings. HN may want to shill for being cooped up but that doesn't represent how most of the world live or want to live
    - DharmaPolice 5y ago
      Isn't this story about people who want to work from home?
      - easytiger 5y ago
        I'm sorry, I don't see how your point relates to mine, nor why it is a question?
  - 5y ago
purple_ferret 5y ago
Would it? Remote work might incentive overall less density, which, on the whole, leads to a bigger carbon footprint per capita.
- eru 5y ago
  Depends on where people want to live and work. But a big part of why lower density is bad is because it leads to lots of commuting.
  - alistairSH 5y ago
    Commuting is no doubt a large contributor to carbon emissions. But, suburban and rural living lead to car-centric lifestyles in general. Driving to school, to the grocer, to entertainment and dining, etc. Plus all the infrastructure to support that - more roads, giant parking lots, etc.
    - eru 5y ago
      Yes, perhaps. So a carbon tax is still a good idea. (And so is removing things like minimum parking requirements.)
  - CydeWeys 5y ago
    I live in NYC and don't own a car. All my errands are done on foot and by bike, and I'm using relatively little power because I live in a big apartment building. If I lived in the suburbs and had to use a car for most trips, then my carbon footprint would be substantially higher, even without having to commute. This map gets to the heart of the issue: https://twitter.com/TheJakeSchmidt/status/1424782722409631746?s=19 https://twitter.com/TheJakeSchmidt/status/142478272240963174...
    - eru 5y ago
      Yes. Though I would hope that some people would use remote as an opportunity to work from other cities, and not just from the suburbs. (I work from Singapore for a London based company, for example.)
bennyp101 5y ago
I guess in a purely commuting way, perhaps. But if 100 employees are all at home and are heating/cooling their houses all with different levels of insulation and efficiency, how does that compare to an office building that is controlled and built to be efficient? Or the amount of electric they use to power their home workstation and radio, rather than a shared office radio? Or lower power machines. Or the more shopping trips for lunch or deliveroo orders - because I can't just walk down the road to grab a sandwich. Or those who now drive or catch the bus/train after work to go for a pint - rather than stopping in on the way back. I'm totally all for staying working at home, but I do recognise that it's not just the commuting that has an effect here
- ghaff 5y ago
  If people own a house anyway, working in it during the day doesn't really add much in the energy use. Maybe there's a few degrees more heating or cooling at the margins. Maybe there are more trips to a store--on the other hand, restaurants and cafeterias aren't necessarily super-efficient.
  - bennyp101 5y ago
    Perhaps, but anecdotally my electricity and gas bills have been much higher since I've been working at home - YMMV of course
    - Retric 5y ago
      The question is the relative amount of electrify and gas used at home vs the office plus commute. Running the same computer at home or the office clearly is irrelevant for the environment.
      - bennyp101 5y ago
        Is it though? Maybe my office uses an electricity supplier who charges a bit more, but uses as much renewable as possible, but at home my supplier doesn’t use any renewable, but is cheaper There are just too many factors involved to make a fair comparison - especially across countries
swiley 5y ago
The cost of commuting to yourself is extremely high: 1-2 hours of unpaid time driving, requirement that you buy a house (or rent) in extremely high CoL areas, car maintenance/insurance. It probably all ads up to over 20% of your salary over the year.
pak9rabid 5y ago
This. I've been saying for a decade that if the city of Austin was really serious about doing something about its traffic problem and reducing CO2 emissions, they should incentivize local businesses via tax deductions and/or credits to promote remote work for those who can do it. It'd do a helluva lot more than building new roads and light-rail lines combined.
- Salgat 5y ago
  As an Austin area resident who is well aware of their shitty infrastructure and horrible traffic, I've been saying this for a while now. The best solution to traffic that Austin could do is to simply give tax incentives for remote work. That way the businesses are still located in Austin and paying taxes, even if they have mostly remote workers, while we don't have to pay a fortune on road infrastructure.
WhompingWindows 5y ago
What should the companies then do about their huge campuses with all of the fine amenities? Maybe they could make little work-hotels and employees could stay for retreats and such?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nullc 5y ago
Google claims to be carbon neutral. This claim is false when they are forcing employees to commute and not offsetting the emissions from this required activity.

ctvo 5y ago

Sources please. Edit: The OP makes an extraordinary claim about remote work and reduction in CO2. I would assume members of HN would be intellectually curious enough to want to dig deeper.

judge2020 5y ago
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle#:~:text=typical%20passenger%20vehicle%3F-,A%20typical%20passenger%20vehicle%20emits%20about%204.6%20metric%20tons%20of,around%2011%2C500%20miles%20per%20year https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t.... > A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. > This assumes the average gasoline vehicle on the road today has a fuel economy of about 22.0 miles per gallon and drives around 11,500 miles per year.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  22mpg sounds like fleet average. I don't think the average commuter who could work from home is getting 22mpg, probably close to 30 average. I don't think the frequency of trucks and vans relative to cars and crossovers is not high enough within those demographics to drag down the average that far. I'd pad the estimate for carbon saved and say like 3.5ton/yr per work from home employee.
  - alistairSH 5y ago
    My Honda gets about 20mpg. My BMW about 25mpg. Maybe I'm the exception that proves the rule, but I seriously doubt 30mpg is remotely close to average (for office workers) in the US. Edit - The Ford F-150 is the best selling "car" in the US by a long shot. That isn't all fleet sales - a significant number of normal people own trucks for one reason or another (myself included - Honda Ridgeline).
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Practically every ~10yo or newer sedan, wagon and "wagon pretending to be a crossover" you see is going to get nearly 30mpg (or more). You need a heck of a lot of 10-15mpg vehicles to drag the fleet average down to 22. Most white collar employees who own trucks aren't commuting in them and even then there's more people commuting in 40+mpg subcompacts and hybrids so it should more than balance out. Look at a high class parking garage, 22mpg just doesn't pencil out. 28-30mpg sounds believable.
      - CydeWeys 5y ago
        You're vastly underestimating just how many people own massive inefficient pickup trucks and SUVs that they use for every trip. Maybe you happen to live in a part of the country where this problem isn't particularly bad, but the other parts of the country are driving that average down.
        throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        You're not understanding. The commuting miles saved by working from home is not going to be a cross section of the commuting population and the bits that are over-represented are going to be the white collar employees who skew toward more efficient vehicles so you have to pad the fuel economy or carbon estimates to reflect that.
      - vel0city 5y ago
        I look in high class parking garages around me, and easily 1/3 of the cars are giant pickup trucks. Around here, tons of people will regularly buy a giant cab truck with a 6ft bed they'll mostly use to commute to an office job. Welcome to Texas.
  - shagie 5y ago
    In a different thread, I found https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=40076 https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=40076 as a useful way of looking at CO2. That's got the Honda Fit as that's the one that was in discussion previously. Its a 33mpg car and the 'energy and environment' tab puts it at 4.4 tons/year. I've got a 2009 Honda Insight. > Fuel cost estimates assume national average fuel prices and assume you drive 15,000 miles each year, 45% under highway driving conditions (steady speeds with little or no stopping) and 55% in city driving (low speeds with lots of stopping). Noting that I'm not the typical home worker, but I went from an average of 600 miles/month (7200 miles/year) to 30 miles/month over the past year and a half. This took my carbon footprint for driving from 1.7 T/y to 0.1 T/y. The flip side of this number is (for me) that I went from heating the house only a few hours a day in the winter to heating or cooling one room to comfortable. I don't have good numbers on my electrical footprint change. This would again be different with different life circumstances (number of other people in the house, size of house / apartment, etc...)
swader999 5y ago
You really need sources to decide that reducing commuting is a good idea for the environment?
- bombcar 5y ago
  The question is what affect it would have. If it’s minuscule compared to a single bulk cargo freighter it may just be window dressing and greenwashing. If it would reduce 20% of all energy usage worldwide it would hugely significant.
  - gowld 5y ago
    Commute less and also buy less junk.
- inputvolch 5y ago
  No, I'd imagine they need a source that the cost is "extremely high". Are you being purposely disingenuous by reframing the question?
  - swader999 5y ago
    I guess I just get my fur up about the "Sources" demand I see more and more these days. It feels like it is used to stop meaningful discussion on a topic.
- ctvo 5y ago
  I need sources on two claims: > The cost of commuting on the environment is extremely high. Reasonable, but source please so I can learn more. > If 20% of jobs permanently switched to remote, the impact on carbon emissions would be immediate, and extremely positive. A more extraordinary claim. I also need sources to learn more.
  - what-the-grump 5y ago
    Would like sources and measurement as well however, just in NYC the lockdown had a significant impact on the nature around the city, the air was clean. Unfortunately we are back to precovid traffic levels.
adolph 5y ago
As a natural experiment, observe the affect of C19 on the transportation sector in this chart: https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/?tbl=T02.01#/?f=M https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/?tbl=T02.01#/?f... Granted an unknown portion of the reduced transportation was decreased economic activity, so presumably the affect of permanent remote work would be smaller.

CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago

Yes but that isn't typically how the value-cost balance between employee and employer works, unless there is regulation in play. Working from home is a benefit which many people would be willing to trade X% salary for. This is just market forces at work. I've been curious how the market for remote work would play out - I'm especially interested in knowing what X ends up being.

eru 5y ago
But: if you can add a benefit that employees value a lot at zero or negative cost to the company, competition will go that way. No need for regulation in this regard: greed will do the work. Of course, if the cost to companies is positive, things are less clear cut. If you want any regulation here, the boring standard econ answer applies: a carbon tax.
- CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
  Yes one of the most interesting bits of information we will get from the market forces of remote work is seeing how much value being in the office brings to an employer. Obviously this will vary by industry, but if we see huge differences in salary between in-office and remote employees, then that means companies are willing to pay that premium to some people to be in the office. If there is no/little difference in salary, then I think it would be fair to assume that the value of in-office work to employers is negligible. These types of things are rarely this simple though, so I'm going to hold off on having any strong opinions.
  - eru 5y ago
    I agree. I suspect that there are investments with large fixed costs companies can make to make remote productivity go up. (Not so much investments in eg actual hardware, but eg in how you set up team processes.) That would explain heavy pushback from companies before the pandemic, but also that things seem to be running ok now.

Raphael_Amiard 5y ago

I'm used to the conversation in here being extremely US-centric, but realize that this is much less true for European cities with good public transportation. I haven't ever used a car to go to work in my life. I'm also very concerned about this better world where people stay home to save the planet. The common level of social interactions in the modern world is already low enough in my opinion. EDIT: It rarely happens this way but in retrospect I feel my comment is way too tame. You think your problem is going to work. The problem is the whole american lifestyle where you live in an individual house and need a car to do anything, your house is an ecological disaster in terms of how much energy you need to keep it warm/cold, and even bringing food to your house will incur a large carbon footprint. I know the system is hard to changes, but some people need to see the bigger picture, even if you can't do anything about it yet.

ekianjo 5y ago
> good public transportation. Public transportation has a higher environment cost than staying at home to work. That should be fairly obvious.
- easytiger 5y ago
  This reductive argument is rather tiresome. All human activity has a cost. Humans are social beings. HN may want to shill for being cooped up but that doesn't represent how most of the world live or want to live
  - DharmaPolice 5y ago
    Isn't this story about people who want to work from home?
    - easytiger 5y ago
      I'm sorry, I don't see how your point relates to mine, nor why it is a question?
- 5y ago

purple_ferret 5y ago

Would it? Remote work might incentive overall less density, which, on the whole, leads to a bigger carbon footprint per capita.

eru 5y ago
Depends on where people want to live and work. But a big part of why lower density is bad is because it leads to lots of commuting.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  Commuting is no doubt a large contributor to carbon emissions. But, suburban and rural living lead to car-centric lifestyles in general. Driving to school, to the grocer, to entertainment and dining, etc. Plus all the infrastructure to support that - more roads, giant parking lots, etc.
  - eru 5y ago
    Yes, perhaps. So a carbon tax is still a good idea. (And so is removing things like minimum parking requirements.)
- CydeWeys 5y ago
  I live in NYC and don't own a car. All my errands are done on foot and by bike, and I'm using relatively little power because I live in a big apartment building. If I lived in the suburbs and had to use a car for most trips, then my carbon footprint would be substantially higher, even without having to commute. This map gets to the heart of the issue: https://twitter.com/TheJakeSchmidt/status/1424782722409631746?s=19 https://twitter.com/TheJakeSchmidt/status/142478272240963174...
  - eru 5y ago
    Yes. Though I would hope that some people would use remote as an opportunity to work from other cities, and not just from the suburbs. (I work from Singapore for a London based company, for example.)

bennyp101 5y ago

I guess in a purely commuting way, perhaps. But if 100 employees are all at home and are heating/cooling their houses all with different levels of insulation and efficiency, how does that compare to an office building that is controlled and built to be efficient? Or the amount of electric they use to power their home workstation and radio, rather than a shared office radio? Or lower power machines. Or the more shopping trips for lunch or deliveroo orders - because I can't just walk down the road to grab a sandwich. Or those who now drive or catch the bus/train after work to go for a pint - rather than stopping in on the way back. I'm totally all for staying working at home, but I do recognise that it's not just the commuting that has an effect here

ghaff 5y ago
If people own a house anyway, working in it during the day doesn't really add much in the energy use. Maybe there's a few degrees more heating or cooling at the margins. Maybe there are more trips to a store--on the other hand, restaurants and cafeterias aren't necessarily super-efficient.
- bennyp101 5y ago
  Perhaps, but anecdotally my electricity and gas bills have been much higher since I've been working at home - YMMV of course
  - Retric 5y ago
    The question is the relative amount of electrify and gas used at home vs the office plus commute. Running the same computer at home or the office clearly is irrelevant for the environment.
    - bennyp101 5y ago
      Is it though? Maybe my office uses an electricity supplier who charges a bit more, but uses as much renewable as possible, but at home my supplier doesn’t use any renewable, but is cheaper There are just too many factors involved to make a fair comparison - especially across countries

swiley 5y ago

The cost of commuting to yourself is extremely high: 1-2 hours of unpaid time driving, requirement that you buy a house (or rent) in extremely high CoL areas, car maintenance/insurance. It probably all ads up to over 20% of your salary over the year.

pak9rabid 5y ago

This. I've been saying for a decade that if the city of Austin was really serious about doing something about its traffic problem and reducing CO2 emissions, they should incentivize local businesses via tax deductions and/or credits to promote remote work for those who can do it. It'd do a helluva lot more than building new roads and light-rail lines combined.

Salgat 5y ago
As an Austin area resident who is well aware of their shitty infrastructure and horrible traffic, I've been saying this for a while now. The best solution to traffic that Austin could do is to simply give tax incentives for remote work. That way the businesses are still located in Austin and paying taxes, even if they have mostly remote workers, while we don't have to pay a fortune on road infrastructure.

WhompingWindows 5y ago

What should the companies then do about their huge campuses with all of the fine amenities? Maybe they could make little work-hotels and employees could stay for retreats and such?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nullc 5y ago

Google claims to be carbon neutral. This claim is false when they are forcing employees to commute and not offsetting the emissions from this required activity.