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Is telecommuting really green?
Los Angeles traffic.
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Kai Ryssdal: If the powers that be at Marketplace would only agree to rig up a studio in my garage, I'd be all set. I wouldn't ever have to set foot in the friendly confines of the Frank Stanton Studios ever again.
But my issues aside, technology has made telecommuting pretty easy. Tens of millions of people work from home at least once in a while. For years, we've been told that avoiding the drive into the office is a bonus for the environment. Turns out, like so many other things, it's just not that easy.
From the Marketplace Sustainability desk, Adriene Hill has the story.
Adriene Hill: This was supposed to be a story answering a pretty simple question: Does telecommuting make sense for the environment? The easy answer is not always. But the real answer is much, much more complicated.
Sharon Forrest: I'm Sharon Forrest and I work from home in Atlanta, Ga.
Forrest's an administrative assistant for a psychotherapist. She handles most of the paperwork, phone calls and scheduling from her home.
Forrest: I have an open hour...
She makes the 43-mile roundtrip drive to the office only once a week. And all those driving miles saved make Forrest's setup seem like an environmental slam dunk -- except it's been cold in Atlanta this winter and Forrest's furnace is old.
Forrest: Every time that I have a technician service it, he kind of stumbles out of the basement and says, "Lady, I never saw a furnace that old."
That old furnace from the 1920s is really inefficient, and she wouldn't use it if she was out of the house.
Patricia Mokhtarian: It's quite possible to generate more energy from the building standpoint by telecommuting, than you save.
Patricia Mokhtarian is a professor at the University of California Davis. Mokhtarian says the environmental calculation for each person that chooses to work from home will be different, depending on driving habits, infrastructure and geography. For example. telecommuters in temperate Los Angeles need less energy for heat in the winter than folks in Chicago.
Mokhtarian: And of course, you want to look at the next step back and ask, "Where does the energy come from?" In a region where the energy is largely coal, then you could be talking about more emissions in the long run than obviously in a place with cleaner energy.
Is your head spinning yet? There are other factors to consider before feeling all environmentally virtuous about staying home -- new computers, furniture, lighting, clothing, food.
Researchers at Cal Berkeley created a formula (PDF) to analyze the impact of working at home. Here's just a part of the calculation:
Man: Type of house, floor area used for work, space constructed specifically for telework purposes or not, house used per seven-day week.
And on and on. Even situations that seem bad for the environment, clearly bad, are hard to sort out.
Amanda Hickman: I am either on the phone or in front of the computer or both, all day long.
Amanda Hickman works out of her home in Brooklyn. She used to bike to work, so telecommuting doesn't save any gasoline. And now, instead of going into an office, she heats her drafty brownstone.
Hickman: I think it would be a lot more efficient to be off in a space where someone's already heating it and someone's already cooling it, instead of me being camped out in my apartment heating the whole apartment for only one person.
But -- and here's the but -- there's no office for Hickman not to go to. So there's no duplicate desk being wasted, or heat being wasted, there aren't extra computers or phones. And so again, it's complicated. Lame, I know.
But there are simpler answers for the ecologically minded that start with simpler questions: How do you use energy? Can you cut that down? According to the federal government, three-quarters of us, when we do go into work, drive in our cars all alone. And so, for three-quarters of us, the solution could be as simple as sharing a ride.
I'm Adriene Hill for Marketplace.
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I think it is great work that this team and this professor have been investigating it. I've watched telecommuters and listened to them tout its tenets for years in the UC System. It is outrageous and false that it is productive or green. It only encourages people to live further from work. Commuting 3 times a week at 50 miles is simply more than 5 x 20. All urban planners agree the answer is alternative transportation and living closer to your work...revitalizing inner cities etc. Some telecommuters actually fly! A seat on a plane burns a years worth of gasoline for a cross country flight per person! Enabling people to own large ineffiecient homes deep in the burbs, and then enable them to drive a SUV because they are doing their part...not driving two days a week or whatever. It's complete nonsense. It's simply about the laziest government workers using it as a way to provide childcare be defrauding the tax payer and orchestrating a TC agreement with their lazy incompetent boss. Some are working side gigs. You simple are NOT contributing to the team if young children are at home when you are TCing. In private industry, performance matters and might be self-correcting, in a government job with employee protections, it is unmistakably criminal to do it and allow it.
The link to the web tool mentioned in the story is: http://greenmfg.me.berkeley.edu/green/SoftwareTools/Telework/
Some great comments and discussion here & I will try not to retread where others have gone. First off, while it can be made into a very complex discussion, it really is just common sense if you boil down the facts simply and easily. The immediate concern earth-wise is that the levels of CO2, nitrous oxide and methane are all outside the natural range for the 650,000 years predating the industrial age & a huge majority of it is due to what I'll simply refer to as business activity. In the U.S., 75% of these three emissions come from buildings and transportation, with office buildings, commuting and biz air travel making up most of that 75%.
It is left to reason and common sense that if we lessen building space, commuting and air travel, then we take a significant bite out of our continuing and growing gaseous engine of commerce. In fact, there is NO OTHER means we have of reducing climate change + stimulating the economy + and creating social change than to start rejoining work and home. Kirkpatrick Sale wisely noted in his 1980 book, Human Scale, that the madness of American transportation has its roots in the separation of work and home...think about it: 50 years ago and throughout time, we live and work relatively close, now, well...
At BetterWorld Telecom, we started to study this dynamic a few years ago with our partnership with the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, which produced the BetterWork Framework (www.BetterWorkToday.com), and we have dedicated the mission of our company to seeing the transformation of the $2T global telecoms industry towards becoming an advocate & leader towards an economy based on information highways & not asphalt highways, cars, gas, electricity, planes, huge redundant buildings - these are the sinkholes of our economy.
When Peak Oil is affirmed by the financial markets (some say it has already occurred and the most conservative estimates put it around 2030), so let's figure sometime this decade), the above activity and our economy will be changed in staggering fashion, every day will bring us closer to oil becoming less and less available - so let's start the shift now, the lines have been laid, the infrastructure is there to make the transition to a broadband economy and away from an oil based, unproductive scenario especially here in the U.S. based on needless moving around and occupying of buildings that could be much smaller or changed to intelligent structures, housing flexible workforces of the future.
This is not a call for everyone to run for the hills and work from their basements, but a significant change in our work patterns will have more impact than anything else. Based on case studies of Sun Micro, Best Buy, Cisco and many others (and many of our customers) that we highlight in our BetterWork report, the results speak for themselves: higher productivity, huge environmental savings, lower health care costs, the list goes on and on.
We will all work this way someday, with the flexibility to work together when we NEED to and remotely as a matter of course. From the great World Wildlife Fund report from 2009: if 50% of those who CAN, work 4 days of the week remotely, we cut our Co2 output in half here in the U.S., its a 500-page report, very conclusive and full of statistics.
The trends are already happening, technology is adapting, the new Federal Telework Legislation, companies like O Desk knocking it out of the park, remote call center workers growing like weeds...so, the writing is on the wall, let's get going and make this a national priority - thanks to Marketplace for spurring this great discussion.
Matthew Bauer
President & Co-founder
BetterWorld Telecom
Kate Lister's analysis is helpful. One branch of the analysis seems to end with 100,000 injuries and fatalities per year. I expect that a lot of those injuries use a few barrels of oil in medical goods and follow-up travel, and bad injuries could use scores of barrels of oil. It would still be a small part of the total effect, but if that has not been included, it's another benefit.
And to think I searched the archives to find this story, after missing it 2 nights ago - what a waste! Could you select a poorer example than a home with a 1920s furnace? Forget the Obama rebate, that beast should have been replaced 30 years ago. Here are some other savings from telecommuting not considered:
1. Wear and tear on car - tires, brakes, oil changes, etc. All require energy to replenish.
2. Dress clothing - anything made with polyester or blend are petroleum based.
3. The fuel used to deliver the items on 1 and 2 above.
4. Dry cleaning for work clothes - also derived from petroleum ... and hazardous to the environment.
5. Desk space left vacant by telecommuters is not vacant for long - re-allocated to other workers, resulting in better use of facilities and less need for new buildings.
If a comprehensive, scientific analysis (unlike this story) was done on telecommuting, it would definitely be environmentally beneficial, not to mention the other benefits (social, spiritual, etc) that it can provide. This story was more spectacular than analytic.
Kate Lister reply covers just about all. Two years ago I calculated that the average commuter in San Diego spent 244 hours in his/her car and that didn't include the 10 or 15 minutes a day that they may have left early to be sure to get to work on time.
Another factor that often isn't considered is that if a substantial number of people telecommuted, there would be an increase in traffic flow reducing the commuting time of those who did have to drive to work. Traffic flow can increase by double the percent of traffic reduction. In other words, if there is a reduction of 5% in the number of people driving, the traffic flow could increase by 10%.
OK, point taken: the situation is more complicated than it first appears. However, your example is bogus. Even using a furnace from the '20's, if you leave and turn the furnace off (or down), when you return you will have to reheat the room. Depending on how long you're gone (likely more than 8 or 10 hours), the energy taken to raise the temperature may well equal or exceed to maintain the temeperature. Then, there's the matter of heat infiltration.
All that aside, you must also factor in the pollution from your car (but not if you bike or walk, while power plants use scrubbers, unless they're nuclear or hydro), the wear and tear (and repair) of the roads, the potential for accidents, with attendant medical care, loss of life and repairs to cars and roads).
All in all, except in specialized circumstances, it is likely MORE green to stay home than to commute.
I'm embarrassed for public radio that this ridiculous segment made it on the air, and even more so for Adrienne who had to deliver it.
Stop and think ( I know that's old fashioned, but let's try it anyway ): the Atlanta example is silly, so let's take a really bad case, a old furnace in a big old house in Maine.
According the US Dept of Energy that place is going to cost about $4,500 a year to heat. But according to EnergyStar.gov, we can save about $180 a year in energy costs by turning down the heat when we're away during the day and when we're in bed at night. So let's assume by working at home we forego that, and keep the temperature up all the time. In fact, let's double it, just so no one can whine that we weren't fair in our estimate. So in the worst case we could dream up, short of living in the Antarctic, we'll assume it costs us $360 a year extra in heating costs to work at home.
So what do we save by not commuting? The average 2010 commute in Maine was about 23 minutes each way, call it 45 round trip. That's a bit less than the national average so we'll use 30 miles instead of 32. And we'll assume an efficient car at 30mpg to make the math easy instead of the actual 22.4 average. That means we burn a gallon of gas everyday, 30 miles at 30 miles per gallon. Now, let's call it $3.00 a gallon for gas (I paid $3.50 at 7-11 here in Southern California yesterday).
So using conservative numbers all the way around, if we commute 236 days a year—typical considering 2 weeks vacation and 10 holidays—at $3 a day for fuel it will cost us $708 a year to get back and forth to work. If we work at home just half the time, the current national average for teleworkers, we'd save $354 (which is so close to $360 it surprised even me). And don't forget, we figured the costs on working at home full time, but the savings on only half time.
But here's the kicker - for those of you massaging your knuckles, ready to bang away on the keyboard in protest over the other home office costs we left out—the IRS figures auto travel costs actually are about 50¢ a mile or $15 a day, not $3, as we've assumed. Thats $3,540 a year, or $1770 for half-time commuters, waaaay more than the $360 extra it costs to stay home—and remember we assumed twice the real cost, just to be conservative.
Tell me again why telecommuting doesn't make sense?
More research would improve the story. Two major studies counter the claims of high home energy use for telecommuters:
A study by Sun Microsystems in 2008 investigated whether Sun’s flexible work program really saved energy, or simply transferred energy cost and load to employees. Researchers found that the office equipment energy consumption rate at a Sun office was twice that of home office equipment energy consumption.
Another study, from the Consumer Electronics Association in 2007, found that just one day of telecommuting saves the equivalent of up to 12 hours of an average household’s electricity.
At the TeleworkResearchNetwork we've synthesized over 250 studies on telecommuting and related topics. And we've interviewed the nation’s largest and smallest virtual employers and their employees, corporate executives, telework advocates and naysayers, top researchers, legislators, leaders of successful telework advocacy programs in both the public and private sector, and venture capitalists who have invested in the remote work model. Our research has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and dozens of other publications.
Using the latest Census data, and assumptions from dozens of government and private sector sources, we've developed a model to quantify the economic, environmental, and societal potential on telecommuting for every, city, county, Congressional District, and state in the nation. It's been used by company and community leaders throughout the U.S. and Canada to quantify the extent to which telecommuting can reduce greenhouse gases and petroleum usage, save money, improve work-life balance, increase employee loyalty and turnover, reduce absenteeism, increase productivity, and reduce highway congestion and traffic accidents. It's available free on the web at http://teleworkresearchnetwork.com/research/telework-savings-calculator/ along with a model that allows companies and communities to quantify their own potential telecommuting savings. Complex models, based on over two dozen parameters, are available to evaluate unique community and company situations.
We've built a model that quantifies the financial, environmental, and time savings from telework.
The model accounts for many of the issues noted in this article. For example the reduction in travel on telework days is typically between 55% and 75% (based on a well-respected study by the Reason Foundation). The model also accounts for additional home energy (based on actual measured usage by Sun Microsystems and others).
What it shows is that if the 40% of US workers with telework-compatible and a desire to work from home at least part of the time (about 80%) did so just half of the time (roughly the national average for those who do):
The Nation would:
- Save 289 million barrels of oil—equivalent to 37% of our Persian Gulf imports
- Reduce greenhouse gases by 53 million tons/year—27% of the President’s 2020 goal
- Reduce road travel by 115 billion miles/year saving $2 billion in road maintenance
- Reduce road congestion thereby increasing productivity for non-telecommuters as well
- Save 100,000 people from traffic-related injury or death
- Improve emergency responsiveness
- Reduce pollution from road work and new office construction
- Preserve open spaces
- Reduce the number of latchkey kids
- Alleviate the strain on our crumbling transportation infrastructure
- Reduce the offshoring of jobs and homeshore some that have already been lost
- Raise the standard of living in rural and disadvantaged areas
- Open new avenues for workforce retraining
- Reduce terrorism targets of opportunity
ve $124 billion in real estate, electricity, and related costs
- Save $46 billion in absenteeism
- Save $31 billion in employee turnover
- Improve continuity of operations
- Avoid environmental sanctions, city access fees, etc.
- Improve work life balance and better address the needs of families, parents, and senior caregivers.
- Avoid the ‘brain drain’ effect of retiring boomers by allowing them to work flexibly
- Be able to recruit and retain the best people
- Better address the needs of disabled workers, rural residents, and military families
Individuals would:
- Achieve a better work-life balance
- Recoup 2-3 weeks of free time per year—time they’d have otherwise spent commuting
- Save $2,000-$7,000/year
- Save $15 billion at the pumps
- Suffer fewer illnesses
In total, that’s an economic impact of almost $650 billion a year!
It's time we made the road less traveled the way to work.
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