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People who work from home all the time ‘cut emissions by 54%’ against those in office
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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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.
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