With country-wide snow and ice causing chaos on our transport systems, more and more people have been forced to work from home. This provides businesses with the perfect opportunity to see if home-working practices can work for them and help them to lower their carbon consumption. Home-working can be effective for some firms yet inappropriate for others, so this short trial can help you to assess whether this more flexible working strategy will help you cut carbon and associated office costs.
The Benefits
There are two key effects that home-working has on the carbon dioxide emissions:
- A home-working employee may not need a permanent space in the office and will not be using office equipment, therefore there will be a reduction in overall office energy use and associated emissions [1]. There is a common perception that home-workers manage their energy use at home far more effectively than they would in the workplace as they will be paying for it, and research by the Department of Employment in Sheffield [2] found that home-workers use just half of the energy that their office-based colleagues do in average working hours.
- More importantly, working from home means the employee no longer needs to commute to the office, which decreases the carbon dioxide emissions associated with transport and travel up to 98%. However, research published has indicated that although transport miles are reduced, the carbon emissions saved is highly dependant on the mode of transport usually used and the distance to the office. Overall though, it seems to indicate the working from home is carbon negative.
Other benefits, both long and short term, include:
- Private car traffic could be cut by 3% in the shirt term, with a potential for greater savings in the future.
- Peak traffic congestions could be reduced.
- The need for new road building to be reduced.
- Helping to reduce development pressure in London and the South East.
The Disadvantages
Naturally, transferring your work from the office to your home will also transfer some of your carbon footprint. It has been found that trips that were usually combined with the commute will now be taken independently, for example, driving children to school or driving for lunch, thereby increasing emissions in some cases.
The Future
It has been shown in various studies, that home-working could make an important contribution to the sustainable development strategy for the UK, if put in the right policy framework and implemented well by companies. As part of companies’ environmental policies, home-working should be encouraged and the Government should promote it more. However at the moment, that is not the case, therefore the situation needs to be carefully assessed in order to deliver the best environmental benefits.
[1] http://www.amillan.co.uk/media/files/Homeworking%20V1.pdf
[2] http://www.forumforthefuture.org/files/Encouraginggreentelework.pdf
