Remote work and carbon emissions

Peter du ToitI'm the founder of FutureWork IQ where I spend my time assisting businesses to improve their climate literacy so as to understand the projected impacts from the expanding climate crisis and how to adapt their workplaces in the face of these impacts.

The State of California has created a live dashboard to show the real-time impact of working remotely for 12 agencies across the state.

This past week:

8,408 employees were working remotely full-time
2,395 employees were working remotely part-time
428 employees were were working in-office

Notice the weekly savings estimates. They are staggering. From a carbon emission perspective this way of working saved an estimated 610 metric tons of CO2 for the week!

(From a South African perspective this is the equavilant of flying 32 ORT > LHR return flights everyday this past week)

The impact is enormous, just from ending commutes.

Here is our prediction. Governments will very soon begin looking at every single way they can to curb emissions to avert a global climate catastrophe. Using the COVID pandemic as a blueprint “carbon emission lockdowns” are a very real possibility. (ie curbing the use of fossil fuel driven transportation)

Our suggestion to leadership teams: Use this current experience to learn the established remote working best practices and learn how to assimilate these into your business. In fact why not learn how to become completely location independent?

You will avoid major future disruption this way.