Summary

Commuting accounts for around 2.5% of the UK's carbon emissions. Employees who work from home (telework) reduce the carbon impact of their commuting. And when it is well implemented and supported, most people like part-time telework and are more productive. But meaningful carbon savings only come when employees telework full-time or nearly so and have no permanent alternative office desk. Such high-intensity telework stresses managers, staff and organisations and requires more support and importantly training to underpin the significant behaviour change.

Carbon emission savings from teleworking

The UK Department for Transport (DfT) estimates that domestic transport contributes roughly 25% of the UK's carbon emissions. About 11% of that comes from commuting, so commuting is responsible for around 2.5% of the UK's total emissions.

Teleworking means working at home using computers and telecommunications rather than commuting into an office. An international consortium of IT suppliers calculated that moderate levels of telework would save half a percent of the world's "business as usual" carbon emissions for 2020. Half a percent doesn't sound much, but reducing emissions is hard, and telework savings were in the top ten of forty IT-enabled initiatives.

A similar reduction (0.55%) has been calculated for a pattern of telework in Australia — this time the third highest of a range of carbon saving measures. Half a percent would also be the UK's approximate saving if every car commuter worked from home one day a week.

Green government and the public sector

In May this year, the Prime Minister David Cameron said that he wants the new coalition to be the "greenest government ever" and pledged to cut central government's emissions by 10% in the first twelve months. He added, "And to those who say this is insignificant, remember this: the UK’s public sector has a bigger carbon footprint than the entire waste industry."

New government focus on reducing travel

In May 2010, Norman Baker MP became Under-Secretary of State for Transport, with, for the first time, an official brief to look at alternatives to travel. A senior DfT official commented that previous administrations had "danced around the issue of reducing the need … to travel", and this was "a new and exciting area for the department".

Additional benefits of telework

Telework stands out from other carbon reduction strategies because it brings additional benefits. When well-implemented and supported, teleworking means:

• More productive and happier staff with fewer absences,
• Reduced time, cost and stress of commuting,
• More flexible (and possibly healthier) life-styles and easier to fulfil care obligations,
• Potentially reduced office costs,
• Increased staff retention and opportunity for greater diversity,
• Consistency with wider distributed working patterns.

Low-intensity telework

Teleworking can be a small but valuable carbon win and a definite win for employer and employee. But achieving these wins means doing things differently. Even working at home one or two days a week needs managers and staff to change behaviour, staff to re-organise their lives and homes, and organisations to re-organise IT and support systems. So moving to even low-intensity telework needs training and preparation.

More intense telework delivers more carbon reduction

Unfortunately, low-intensity telework doesn't maximise carbon savings. Less (especially car) commuting certainly brings savings. But another big saving (both carbon and cost) can be made by reassessing the office itself. Hot desks (temporarily-shared desks) or no desks (touch-down and meeting places only) yield further carbon and energy savings. And laptop computers need less energy than office PCs.

Problems with high-intensity telework

The difficulty is that high-intensity telework stress-tests staff, managers and the organisation (as summarised here). The absence of a permanent alternative office desk makes it quite different from "working at home a couple of days a week." The top problems I hear from high-intensity teleworkers in my training workshops are:

• Managers' mistrust of homeworkers and poor performance management,
• Teleworkers feeling isolated and disengaged,
• Poor communication,
• Poor time-management at home.

These problems can, however, be remedied through supporting people well and equipping them with new knowledge, skills and behaviours through quality training in the management and conduct of teleworking.

Model of carbon savings from telework

The considerations above are summarised and modelled in Figure 1 below, showing selected results from our Carbon And Telework Model. The figure shows the percentage of carbon emissions for increasing days a week telework compared to full-time commuting (the leftmost column). The significant fall in emissions with more than two days a week telework is the result of hot desking.

The model makes conservative assumptions from UK data about the CO2 emissions due to an individual from (a) energy used by an office building and (b) commuting by car. It gives an organisation's perspective (i.e. what an organisation might use in a carbon footprint or travel plan calculation).

Carbon emissions modelled here also correlate with cost. Lower energy bills save an organisation money. Hot desking means less office space to own or rent, with ultimately five-day-a-week teleworkers needing only touch-down and meeting areas.

The model also shows the estimated difficulty of teleworking and thus the need to support behavioural change with training if teleworking is to be sustainable.

NOTICES

This paper

Please cite this paper as: Gundry, John, "Cut Commuting to Cut Carbon". White Paper from Knowledge Ability Ltd, Malmesbury UK. Published at www.knowab.co.uk/cutcommuting.html. Version 4-2, August 2010.

A more detailed paper How Telework Can Cut Organisations' Carbon Footprints is in preparation. Please contact the author for details.

Resources on telework

Relevant to this topic, Knowledge Ability offers the Successful Telework training workshop and the Don't Travel - Work Remotely short online class, more detail of which can be seen here . We also offer two consulting packages Are You Ready for Telework? and Telework Audit more details of which are here.

About the author

Dr John Gundry is Director of Knowledge Ability Ltd, a UK-based company that provides international training and consulting on virtual teams, remote working and teleworking. Contact gundry@knowab.co.uk - +44 (0)1666 826654

Copyright and disclaimer

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