When office workers stopped working in offices in 2020 and traded their cubicles for living room sofas during COVID-19 lockdowns, many began to question the time they were spending commuting. Could those rushed mornings spent stuck in traffic have been used to get work done? Life was often lonely for those stuck at home, but people felt grateful when birds chirping echoed through quiet streets. And the temporary decline in travel had the side effect of reducing global carbon dioxide emissions by 7 percent in 2020, a glimmer of good news in an otherwise dire year.
As Grist reported, emissions have rebounded in 2021 as people have begun to resume normal activities, but the office isn't the same as before: While remote work was rare before the pandemic, 28% of Americans now work a “hybrid” schedule, going into the office some days and 13% working remotely full-time.
While recent data suggests remote work could accelerate companies' carbon-zero plans, companies don't seem to be factoring climate change into their decisions about the future of office work. “Unfortunately in the U.S., it's not a high priority,” says Kate Lister, founder of the consulting firm Global Workplace Analytics. “It is a high priority, but it gets swept aside by the next shiny thing.” Commuting falls into a company's so-called “Scope 3” emissions, an indirect source that's routinely ignored but accounts for three-quarters of the business world's emissions on average.
A study published in Nature Cities in April found that increasing the number of people working remotely could reduce annual carbon dioxide emissions by 192 million tons. That would translate to a 10% reduction in emissions from transportation, the nation's most polluting sector. These results are consistent with other peer-reviewed studies. A study published in PNAS last fall found that switching to remote work instead of going to the office could reduce a person's carbon footprint by 54%, even when accounting for non-commuting travel and residential energy use.
“This seems like a very obvious solution to a very pressing and real problem,” said Curtis Sparrer, president and co-founder of the San Francisco-based PR firm Vosper.
Employees have been working remotely since the initiative began in 2015. “And we're concerned that this 'return to the office' is getting in the way.”
Many companies are requiring employees to come into the office regularly. Last year, major tech companies including Google, Amazon and Meta told employees they needed to come into the office three days a week or face penalties such as reduced chances of promotion. Even Zoom, the video conferencing platform that rose to prominence during the pandemic, is requiring employees who live within 50 miles of the office to commute two days a week.
Of course, going into an office and working with other humans has many benefits: in-person interaction with coworkers increases social interaction (no awkward interruptions in Zoom meetings) and it's a strong reason to change out of sweatpants in the morning. From a climate change perspective, the problem is that most Americans tend to drive to work rather than bike or take the bus. A recent Vosper poll found that two-thirds of Americans drive to work, most of which are gas-powered. Electric vehicle purchases are on the rise, but they still only account for about 1 percent of cars on the road.
Once people are called back into the office, the climate benefits begin to diminish quickly. A study published in PNAS by researchers from Cornell University and Microsoft found that working from home two to four days a week reduces emissions by 11 to 29 percent compared to working in the office full time. Working remotely just one day a week reduces emissions by just 2 percent. Another big factor is that maintaining physical office space uses a lot of energy, as it needs to be heated and cooled.
So can companies claim to be environmentally conscious while forcing employees to commute to work? According to Vosper's survey, many Americans don't think so. More than half of millennials and Gen Zers said it would be hypocritical for companies to celebrate Earth Day while still requiring employees to come to work in person.
Sparah gives the example of Disney, which celebrated Earth Month in April with a campaign promoting environmental activism, but last year required employees to come into the office four days a week. Meanwhile, Nike touted an Earth Day collection of “sustainable” leather shoes, but CEO John Donahoe argued that remote work stifled creativity. “Looking back, we know it was really hard to do bold, disruptive innovation, to develop a bold, disruptive shoe over Zoom,” he told CNBC in April.
“We're entering an era of magical thinking, where people seem to think that this is enough, but that's not true,” Sperler said. “And the frustration for me is, we've all experienced what it's like to work from home, we know how it works, and we know how it can be improved.”
But working from home can come with its own environmental challenges. A recent study looking at pre-pandemic trends found that if 10% of workers started working from home, U.S. transit agencies would lose $3.7 billion a year and fare revenues would fall by 27%, according to a study published in Nature Cities by researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Florida, and Peking University. Some experts worry that working from home could drive people to the suburbs, where carbon emissions tend to be higher than in urban areas.
Now, Lister said, many employees would prefer to work from home full-time, but are forced to come into the office. She sees the return-to-office mandate as a result of executives wanting to go back to the way things were before. “I think as that generation retires, a lot of these conversations will die away,” she said.
This story It was produced by Grist Reviewed and distributed by Stacker Media.