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Working remotely can more than halve an office employee’s carbon footprint
- mikhailfranco 3y agoIs there a carbon credit for that? If not, there should be a tax on employers for RTO, in the cause of realizing externalities.
- syndicatedjelly 3y agoThere never was a tax to begin with, in fact there is the opposite (tax credits) in a lot of America if a business decides to open up a shiny new $200 million concrete jungle and forces employees to commute in.
- barney54 3y agoTax credits for what exactly?
- syndicatedjelly 3y agoFor bringing business to the community. People will move to live close to the office, the company itself pays taxes in the future to the township, more traffic = more opportunities for small business. It's generally seen as healthy for an economy, but the huge downside is the environmental externalities are completely ignored. Depending on the community, they may be required to do an environmental study which does...many things that I'm not familiar with. All I know is a lot of new buildings in my area come with lots of green space and solar panels over parking lots. And probably other green things.
- xur17 3y agoOne of my favorite examples: my Dad worked at a F100 company, and they moved a large group of employees to a new office building. That office building was taxed in a special "opportunity zone" that gave the employer tax credits while the employees got stuck with a new higher local income tax.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoFundamentally, the problem is that the worker should be given incentives to bring their income to an area. This allows a community to diversify economically, vs handouts to large corporations who will continually wield their business contributions against a jurisdiction to continue to obtain substantial tax breaks or other economic concessions, and when they finally leave, they do substantial harm to the community. As a community, you then cater to workers to draw and keep them there (not maliciously, simply providing high quality of life like a community should), and they will continue to contribute to the community by way of their spending from income (on taxes and consumption) for their productive lifespan.
- robertlagrant 3y ago> Fundamentally, the problem is that the worker should be given incentives to bring their income to an area This can be done naturally, if local government intervention is low, so there's more money for local businesses to spend, or unnaturally, if local government intervention is high, so local businesses have less decision power, and the local government spends that money on infrastructure for companies coming in who pay less tax.
- d3w4s9 3y agoI understand how it works but it just seems a zero sum game. When someone moves from city A to city B, it's more tax for city B but less for A, and it often happens in one direction than the other. Same for companies. Reminds me of the silly and meaningless "border war" between Missouri and Kansas.
- Izkata 3y agoTypically cities A and B fall under different local governments (states or counties or whatever), making it not zero sum for the government of city B to attract the business.
- syndicatedjelly 3y ago> I understand how it works but it just seems a zero sum game. Not necessarily, most companies are growing and building new offices in addition to existing ones.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoPublic companies will be required to report their carbon emissions as part of new SEC rules. Perhaps this could be reported to the SEC if they don't report these emissions? Sounds like securities fraud to me if they don't (hat tip to Matt Levine's "Everything is securities fraud" series). Buy some shares, get some standing, spin up the legal apparatus. Not legal advice. https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2022-46 https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2022-46 > The proposed rules also would require a registrant to disclose information about its direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Scope 1) and indirect emissions from purchased electricity or other forms of energy (Scope 2). In addition, a registrant would be required to disclose GHG emissions from upstream and downstream activities in its value chain (Scope 3), if material or if the registrant has set a GHG emissions target or goal that includes Scope 3 emissions. These proposals for GHG emissions disclosures would provide investors with decision-useful information to assess a registrant’s exposure to, and management of, climate-related risks, and in particular transition risks. The proposed rules would provide a safe harbor for liability from Scope 3 emissions disclosure and an exemption from the Scope 3 emissions disclosure requirement for smaller reporting companies. The proposed disclosures are similar to those that many companies already provide based on broadly accepted disclosure frameworks, such as the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
- dehrmann 3y agoCredits should be for actually removing carbon. Credits for this devolve really quickly into giving people credits because they bought a sedan instead of a truck. Tax emissions, credit removal. Less tax is its own reward.
- Eumenes 3y agoCompanies should be taxed MORE for having people work in an office?
- toomuchtodo 3y agoYes. They are causing negative externalities without exposure to the costs. Why would we collectively not force them to internalize the costs of their requirements? Pay up. Tangentially, it is sort of fun to potentially wield capitalist economic mechanisms against poor human decisions powered by hierarchical social power structures causing detriment to physical systems. Not all hacks require code (although, one could consider statute and executive branch rule making a form of code processed by the legal system I suppose).
- robertlagrant 3y agoThey pay them by paying their employees, who pay for transport.
- lowmagnet 3y ago…but not the pollution, road maintenance due to extra wear, fuel economy stagnation, etc. That is what gp was referring to: externalities, which you don't directly pay for
- sahila 3y agoGas tax and car registrations cover a fair amount of what you're talking about.
- smileysteve 3y agoI've got some bad news for you about the gas tax for repairs; at least on US Interstate highways. > (2021) The transit and highway accounts are projected to have a shortfall of $207B over the next 10 years https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/its-been-28-years-since-we-last-raised-the-gas-tax-and-its-purchasing-power-has-eroded https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/its-been-28-years-since-we... > The American Society of Civil Engineers, which gives U.S. infrastructure a C-minus, is calling on the government and private sector to increase spending on roads and bridges by at least $2.5 trillion within a decade. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-gas-taxs-tortured-history-shows-how-hard-it-is-to-fund-new-infrastructure https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-gas-taxs-tortured-...
- usefulcat 3y agoIt would be far, far more direct to just have a carbon tax.
- vikingerik 3y agoYou realize the effect would be to drive businesses out to foreign jurisdictions that don't have that carbon tax.
- function_seven 3y agoTariffs on goods that originate from countries that don't properly account for this externality. If a country doesn't want to collect it from their domestic producers, we'll handle it on our end. Companies offshoring production to avoid the carbon tax will be a no-op.
- p0nce 3y agoSame with VAT really. Yet some business just stay there.
- nicoburns 3y agoThe tax is typically on fuel, which employees pay for. In theory this ought to filter through to employers who may well end up having to pay more for in-office employees to cover the extra costs. Whether that plays out in practice I'm not sure.
- ipnon 3y agoRemote work seems like one of many missed “Jetsons opportunities.”[a] Why wouldn’t we, given the ability, work from our own comfy homes instead of rolling into a crowded, stuffy office everyday? Why isn’t this practice that workers clearly love, and are willing to leave companies to keep, seen as a great step in the progress of labor? We should be counting our blessings instead of counting beans, that such a way of working is even possible today. [a] A Jetsons opportunity is any missed prediction of the future from the past, usually in a form like “where’s my flying car?”
- fennecfoxy 3y agoExecutive & management culture. Fortunately the management of a lot of medium-large tech companies have a tech background and have allowed WFH to continue. It's extra large tech companies with career managers who are trying to get people to RTO.
- mattw2121 3y agoExcept, didn't the intro to the Jetsons have George headed to the office every day?
- nedrylandJP 3y agoYes, and when he got there he put his feet up and closed his eyes. https://youtu.be/0JQbeCAlF6s?t=61 https://youtu.be/0JQbeCAlF6s?t=61
- drekk 3y agoWhat does it say about our culture that futuristic media envisioned flying cars and robotic servants but not an altered labor arrangement?
- trgn 3y agoModernism. Infatuation with the transformative power of technology. It transfers responsibilities of political participation (what it means to be a citizen) to a mechanistic, consumptive process (what it means to be a consumer). Could not exist without mass manufacturing (without which technology cannot fulfill its telos) or mass media (without which humans would not submit to this ideology).
- engineer_22 3y agoThe ultimate moral high ground.
- SubiculumCode 3y agoDriving less is good. I hate my commute anyway. However, I did wonder whether having everyone's houses being actively heated/cooled because you are at home versus the business office would result in more net carbon.
- ryukafalz 3y agoDepends on how much you blast the AC/heating while you're home I suppose, and whether or not you have pets and so need to keep your house somewhat heated/cooled all the time anyway. The office I used to work at had the thermostat set far lower in the summer than I ever would at home.
- LazyMans 3y agoThis is pretty easy to figure out by looking at grid energy use. I think a lot of producers make that public info. Not sure there was much impact.
- jrace 3y agoPersonally,my homes heat and ac use us u changed whether or not I am home. There has been minimal savings (from my own small sample size) to reducing either while I am away, as when I would return the system would have to work longer to restore the desired temps. So my situation it actually is a net benefit to work from home.
- ghaff 3y agoI think that’s typical. I can drop my thermostat about 7 degrees F in the winter if I’m not home. Just have a window unit AC which I rarely use and don’t even put in some years. But I’m probably about 40 miles RT to go into my closer office which I have basically not done for years. Sometimes go into the urban one to meet with customer which is about 2x the distance and 3x the time. For most people commuting costs dwarf the costs of being home for the day—unless they move to a bigger and more expensive place.
- theandrewbailey 3y ago
- semerda 3y agoYet somehow the C02 PPM kept on climbing during Covid era when many worked from home. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/
- arrowsmith 3y agoSo?
- olddustytrail 3y agoSo lockdown was a liberal hoax! It never actually happened and there never really were any restrictions.
- arrowsmith 3y agoYou joke, but I've legitimately seen people try to argue that "we never really locked down" and the restrictions were never that stringent.
- fredoliveira 3y agoDoes it surprise you that despite many working from home, the world in general kept on trucking along? Of course CO2 PPM kept rising. Where people work isn't the only cause of carbon emissions.
- enragedcacti 3y agoYou could read the article that you had to scroll past to look at the chart. Can we see a change in the CO2 record because of COVID-19?: https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/covid2.html https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/covid2.html
- Winse 3y ago[flagged]
- yieldcrv 3y ago"I'm going to move the goal posts of this thing I don't like until it reaches a ESG argument, despite all the things I like having a bigger ESG argument, but you're strawmanning if you point that out"
- gsibble 3y agoAnd yet they don't care.
- pelasaco 3y agoWorking Remotely Can More Than Halve an Office Employee's Productivity (but don't have to) https://www.businessinsider.com/wfh-work-from-home-decreases-productivity-18-percent-study-rto-2023-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/wfh-work-from-home-decreases...
- hnta2023 3y ago"The study observed groups of data-entry workers in India working from home and from the office."
- throwbadubadu 3y agoAnd it can also double it.. this study, just to quote one bit > observed data-entry workers in Chennai, India, across two groups — those working from the office and those working from home Don't want to go into all the details that had been discussed when the study was posted first - yes you also said "can". But to start, certainly not the representative office employee that's discussed here.
- voisin 3y agoThe title is misleading as it ignores the qualifier that the employees have to take certain steps at home to achieve this. Some examples: > You and his team found that this isn’t the case. In fact, remote workers often drive more often than their in-office counterparts by taking several short car trips throughout the day. > The researchers also found that working from home can prompt people to use more energy over the course of a workday on things such as air-conditioning and a dishwasher. And remote workers are more likely to move out of big, centralized cities, where lifestyles are generally less carbon-intensive than in suburban or rural areas.
- sideshowb 3y agoThese issues are key. Thanks for raising them. In some recent transport modelling work we decided there wasn't yet enough evidence about wfh, specifically because people may move further from the office. If this study fills some gaps, it's good work. ...edit: ok so it doesn't address causality. Alas. We need a study following a cohort for a few years after wfh became available, vs another cohort denied wfh.
- sideshowb 3y agoDown votes are being used reddit style, I see. I'd love to know what the disagreement is exactly?
- voisin 3y agoI wondered the same thing with my comment which was largely quoting clarifying items from the article. I think this is a touchy subject for people who cannot emotionally handle anything challenging their view.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y agoAnd it's great for DEI as well, truly a moral free lunch https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbooksauthors/2023/01/10/remote-work-is-great-for-equity-diversity/?sh=752617035340 https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbooksauthors/2023/01/10/r...
- Pannoniae 3y agoDEI is an income-suppressing initiative, as shown by "In fact, if your office is in a major hub like New York or Hong Kong, the distant designer may be even more appealing because of lower salary expectations.". That's not a positive.
- sahila 3y agoFeels like that's a matter of perspective, the distant designer and non-Americans may like working for this company and significantly increasing their wages.
- Nischalj10 3y agoand more than halve collaboration. thanks
- brazzledazzle 3y agoWhen the death, strife and pain climate change is bringing becomes impossible to ignore at least we'll be able to say we were able to increase collaboration and shareholder value.
- Nischalj10 3y agonot (by far) the main reason for climate change. if people work together and figure out a way to solve climate change, I think it would happen faster than remotely figuring it out
- woranl 3y agoI don’t think companies can rightfully claim carbon neutral if they don’t account for the GHG emissions from their forced “working in the office” policy. They should be taxed heavily at the very least.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoMuch simpler to just tax things that cause GHG emissions like fossil fuels directly.
- woranl 3y agoIn this case, taxing fossil fuel directly won’t reduce emissions. The increased cost to fossil fuel will simply be passed to the consumers. It just adds cost to the affected employees and makes them accountable for bad corporate policies to make a choice between livelihood and climate. The root of the problem is not addressed. The deep pocket should be accountable. It is the unnecessary emissions forced onto the working class that should be discouraged.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoUnless everyone has unlimited money, then increasing the price of a good decreases the amount of it that is purchased. The higher the price, the less is sold, even for things with low elasticity of demand. Gas at $5/gallon? SUVs are not a problem, and commuting 1.5 hours in individual cars is a thing. Gas at $30/gallon, and you will see people demand more high density communities with walking/bicycling/public transit infrastructure.
- woranl 3y agoWhat actually happened is the costs and wages are all jacked up and we ended up with inflation. There is no meaningful GHG emissions reduction overall.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
- mannyv 3y agoFiring everyone can reduce an office's carbon footprint to 0. Just sayin'
- piuantiderp 3y agoThe (often) unsaid truth about carbon footprint is that dead people produce no carbon. The lineage of the movement can be directly traced to Neomalthusian and eugenicists.
- Null-Set 3y agoNo, dead people produce about 13 kg of carbon.
- groucho 3y agoYou could say this about any pov that discourages any behavior: "Dead people don't murder, and so the movement to stop murder can be traced directly to Neomalthusian and eugenicists." It's obnoxious to exaggerate the perspective of people you disagree with, just to make them seem less reasonable. Those who want people to decrease their carbon footprint don't want you dead, they just want people to decrease their carbon footprint.
- subhero 3y agoYeah, and at least halve the cost for the employer by rolling off office space, supplies, heating, insurance, etc. to the employee. And the decrease of the carbon footprint works “only if they take the necessary measures at home.” I am so done with virtue signalling that puts the responsibilty on the individual instead of holding corporations and policy makers accountable as the main systemic culprits.
- Centigonal 3y ago> I am so done with virtue signalling that puts the responsibilty on the individual instead of holding corporations and policy makers accountable as the main systemic culprits. I agree with you on this point, but staying in one place instead of commuting to and from work every day really does reduce the carbon footprint of most drivers. For people who take transit or bike to work, this may be a moot point.
- liquidgecka 3y agoYou still have to build an office building you wouldn't need, run the AC and heater, clean it, etc.
- subhero 3y agoCommuting,as a neccessity, is also for the policy makers to fix imo, after they have put billions (trillions?) into road infrastructure. Channel it to public/mass transport if you are serious about decreasing carbon footprint of individuals in that aspect.
- Centigonal 3y agoI agree with that. Plenty of European and East Asian cities have massive commuter load with a way smaller per-commuter energy footprint than in the USA.
- irrational 3y agoI work for a Fortune 500 company. One of the things a higher up said in discussing getting people back into the office is they need us spending money of food and driving. Food I can kind of understand. We have a ton of food options on campus that are ran by a third party company. I would guess that my company has a contract with them that we will spend $x and if the employees are not spending at least $x, then the company has to make up the difference. But the driving comment didn't make any sense to us. Is our company getting some sort of kickback from the gasoline stations, car mechanics, or tire shops? Wouldn't the city rather have us not driving to save wear and tear on the roads? Any my company gives so much lip service to sustainability and the environment. What could be better for the environment than nobody driving into work?
- oneepic 3y agoMaybe they want to get the most use out of their parking garage? If they have one.
- irrational 3y agoThere are four parking garages and more surface parking lots than I could possibly count. I think it has more to do with the millions of square feet of office space on campus. But, they should just admit that rather than giving BS excuses.
- monatron 3y agoI used to work for a Fortune 500 company and in my case it was obvious that businesses in and around our campus suffered significantly with more people not coming to the office. My guess is the company had tax incentives in place with the city/state on the condition that their being there was a boost for the local economy. People not coming to work and spending money jeopardized those incentives.
- lowmagnet 3y agoThe sunk cost fallacy in full effect, except in some of the big companies that involves actual investment in real estate they want to recoup somehow. I don't know how long it'll take, but I expect less offices built, and less office floor area being leased in the long term.
- misja111 3y agoThe title is misleading. For who didn't read the article (and judging by the reactions, that is most people here), this is what the study that the article refers to really found: - the way how most people currently work remotely is -more- carbon intensive than commuting to the office - working remotely -can- halve the carbon footprint, if employees take drastic measures to reduce their footprint at home. Such as using solar panels etc. - still, offices could do the same, and employees could also choose more carbon friendly ways to commute to the office and then the balance would swing the other way again
- BadCookie 3y agoThe article seems to be implying that remote workers drive more because they live in more rural places, and some also take “several short trips” throughout the day that add up to more driving than their commute would have been. But why are they taking lots of short trips? To do errands that they would otherwise have done on the weekends? I don’t have any intuition about this.
- achrono 3y ago> we observe substantially more total travel miles for remote workers > to drop off/pick up friends, conduct recreational activities, > visit healthcare facilities, visit friends/relatives, and exercise This is genuinely surprising. From my sample set of 4 people on my team this is really not the case, neither is it for myself.
- swader999 3y agoEveryone knows this yet there's not one head of state encouraging companies that can to relax on the RTO push. Makes me think we aren't in a climate emergency.
- tmnvix 3y agoPeople seriously underestimate how significant driving is to their environmental footprint. Rough calculation is 14,000kg/y of CO2 per capita in the US. Of which 4,000kg would be from driving (at average yearly distance of 20,000km in average new ICE vehicle). Recycling, and other initiatives are nice but don't come close. WFH is a huge help.
- RestlessMind 3y agoEveryone pretty much agrees that effective remote work needs a dedicated setup. Which means having an extra room. That means remote work is going to increase real estate footprint. The carbon savings on commute will instead be used up for propping up suburban lifestyle. If one is living in a dense city and going to use wework instead, then we still need wework office buildings and commute will still be involved. So I don't see real carbon savings with a switch to remote.
- Spivak 3y ago> effective remote work needs a dedicated setup. I have 900 sq ft apartment, when I switched to wfh I went to Ikea, put two desks in my one bedroom one for my partner one for, and it's doubled as our office for years now. Yes you need a dedicated space but do you know what spaces typically have lots of extra room and involve activities that basically never overlap with work -- your bedroom. And this is with the fact that I work on call and get called into work during weird hours, I sit at my kitchen island with headphones.
- brazzledazzle 3y agoWho is everyone and what does dedicated setup mean when they say it? You say it has to be an entire room but for me and most folks I work with outside of management that's a desk somewhere in their house like their room, family room or living room.
- RestlessMind 3y ago> what does dedicated setup mean when they say it? the one where you are not distracted by other family members, like working from your kitchen or living room. That is simply unworkable for a WFH situation.
- brazzledazzle 3y agoI assume you mean young children since older children and adults would respect your boundaries. If you do mean older children and other adults and they're not behaving ridiculously perhaps there's another issue at play impacting your ability to focus. I won't speculate but I had that problem a long time ago and exploring it changed my life for the better.
- nightski 3y agoIt's amusing seeing people justify working from an office but the same people turning around and telling others to not eat meat or other restrictions on their life style. Either it's all in or it's not, and for most people it's not.
- plaidfuji 3y agoMan, I started reading the headline and was worried it would end with “can more than halve an office employee’s lifespan”, haha I’m sure it’s great for the planet, but I’ve been working remotely for about 4 years and my body is not thanking me for it in any way whatsoever.
- brazzledazzle 3y agoIf the only exercise you were getting before really was what you got from the walking you did at work why not incorporate walks around your neighborhood into your day?
- MenhirMike 3y agoYeah, but it makes downtown city centers deserted, and politicians can't have that, so their make your CEO make you get your ass back into the office.
- postalrat 3y agoNot if it takes 3 remote workers to do the work of 1 in office worker.
- gumballindie 3y agoGossip and smalltalk arent work.
- gumballindie 3y agoYeah i’d rather spend the money saved by not commuting on solar panels and a nice little well, a massive internet pipe and a nice little house with a garden. Guaranteed my productivity will be through the roof, and i will also save on emissions. Win win.