Telegraph: Working at home may well be worse for the environment than commuting. I’ve often suspected the same thing, looking at our winter heating bills. But I live far enough from the office (without the option of mass transit) and our new house will be green enough that I think I may be better off continuing to work from home. I should really do the math.
Comments are closed.
This assumes that the house wouldn’t be heated/cooled during the day anyway, which is certainly not true for families with small or home-schooled kids and/or a stay-at-home spouse and/or relative(s).
I don’t really think of working from home as an environmental issue, I think of it more as a transportation & quality of life issue. Like, would you rather work from home or sit in traffic on I95?
Sorry but this study seems screwy. Our home would be heated regardless of whether or not my husband were working here. Who turns the heat in their home off during their work hours? And we’d boil a kettle of water every morning no matter what. The only obvious difference would be that he’s using electricity to power a computer here….which he’d also be doing at an office if he did his work there. What his working from home does allow is the use of only one car most every day instead of two. That seems like a pretty significant benefit, both financially and with regard to air quality.
Um. A lot of people. Most, maybe? Why in the world would you pay to heat (or cool) an empty house? Most homes now come with programmable thermostats for that very reason — 60° from 9-5, 70° from 5-11, 65° from 11-6, 70° from 6-9.
My husband and I were just discussing our carbon footprint a few days ago. He asked what we could do to lower it. I told him very little that we aren’t already doing, that our heating/cooling bill could be lowered, but since my family uses the house all the time (I have two kids still at home)the bill isn’t going to be lowered any time soon.
We, do, however, change the thermostat when we’re gone for long periods of time. The dog doesn’t mind.