Green Tip: Working at Home Worse than at the Office?

Well, more like a green warning. For people working from home, the most obvious benefit is the short commute, or the complete lack of one. Add to this the fact that you are eliminating carbon dioxide emissions that would have otherwise come from driving a car and the effect on the environment is a positive one. Turns out this may not really be the case. Treehugger points us to an article in The Telegraph telling us to work at the office and not at home. Why?

It is mainly due to the fact that for a single person working at home, the amount of energy required to heat and run the house, especialy during the winter months, is much higher than an office full of employees per capita. When comparing carbon dioxide emissions for the year, someone working at home produces 2.38 tonnes of CO2 while an office worker produces 1.68.

-via Treehugger

Thanks to atconc for the pic.

Comments (5)

I love studies like this, but I can't tell if they've factored in the travel emission to the per capita office worker figure. I have a two hour round trip car commute, I'd imagine staying home in my AC free Los Angeles apartment would save quite a bit, but maybe I'm wrong.

I also wonder if they take into account the fact that you're obviously not going to turn the heat off in your house during the winter, regardless of whether you're actually there or not. Sure, you may turn it down a bit if it's under your control, but in my parents new england house, the pipes would freeze.

Of course, I live in a steam radiator heated apartment in manhattan, so my heat is just ON from October through May.

Problem is, you can complicate the equations in so many ways.

What if the multi-worker office is now smaller because it has to house fewer workers, so it uses less energy?

What if the telecommuter has a stay-at-home spouse taking care of the kids (or a nanny) so the house would be heated, cooled, and full of boiling tea kettles all day anyway?

How long of a commute does it take to tip the balance back toward telecommuting?

What if I live in a micro-climate that calls for very little heating or AC but my office is in one that uses much more energy (say, someone who lives a warm spot in San Francisco but works down the Peninsula).

What about being able to work by ambient light at home but needing artificial light in the office because of how each is laid out?

What about the environmental impact of buying fewer clothes because of fewer days in the office and willingness to wear the same jeans a lot? Or of not going out for lunch?

That's just a start. Give me 12 hours and a powerful enough computer program, and I could make that study give any answers I wanted it to.

Also, the TreeHugger duly points out that this is a British study, and there far more people commute to work by public transportation, which should factor into the lower energy bill.

Also, while I think planting more trees will not hurt anyone, planting trees in Oregon will not solve CO2 emission problems for that area, as trees in temperate zones are much less efficient at CO2 sequestration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offset#Climate_impacts

However, trees anywhere are great for providing shade and increasing ambient humidity, which should make it easier to break America's extreme AC dependency.

wende - you are my favorite. you always have such valid points that make me want to say he!! yeah!