Why ending the daily commute will have a major emissions impact

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.

In our race to dramatically reduce emissions we need to analyze every emission source and ask: “Can we dramatically reduce or eliminate this emission source?”

From the data, Electricity & Heat make up the majority of emissions.

Transport is next and makes up 16.2% of global emission. Road transport makes up the bulk of that. From Our World in Data:

“Road transport (11.9%): emissions from the burning of petrol and diesel from all forms of road transport which includes cars, trucks, lorries, motorcycles and buses. Sixty percent of road transport emissions come from passenger travel (cars, motorcycles and buses); and the remaining forty percent from road freight (lorries and trucks). This means that, if we could electrify the whole road transport sector, and transition to a fully decarbonized electricity mix, we could feasibly reduce global emissions by 11.9%.”

We do not have the luxury of waiting for electrified transportation to become more readily available. Right now we can make an impact on transport emissions by eliminating or dramatically reducing the commutes of 1 billion knowledge workers.

It is not hard to imagine that this will be mandated in the near future.

If you are a knowledge-based business, get ahead of this by formalizing your work-from-anywhere work arrangements. Learn the skills to work effectively online. Become location independent.

This is smart business.