Environmentalists say that working remotely reduces carbon dioxide emissions. However, this effect depends on the time of year and climatic conditions in different countries.
Provided by Deutsche Welle
During the COVID-19 pandemic, several studies have emerged on how telecommuting can help combat climate change. Back in June 2020, the Berlin Institute for Scientific Forecasting and Technology Assessment (Institut für Zukunftsstudien und Technologiebewertung – IZT) published a study commissioned by Greenpeace on how remote work could help reduce harmful emissions into the atmosphere. The authors have developed two scenarios – conservative and progressive.
Under a conservative scenario of 25 per cent of employees in Germany working from home two days a week, CO emissions from commuting would be reduced by 3.2 million tonnes. In the progressive scenario, the effect is even greater: if 40 percent of employees work two days a week from home, CO₂ emissions could be reduced by 5.4 million tonnes per year.
Less commuting and energy savings
According to a new study by the UK environmental organization Carbon Trust, commissioned by the Vodafone Institute for Society and Communications, the pandemic and associated remote work have already led to significant reductions in CO₂ emissions. Scientists, in particular, found that in Germany between March 2020 and March 2021, an average of 18.4 million people worked from home about 3.5 days a week. As a result, CO₂ emissions per person were reduced by 72 percent. According to the dpa news agency, the calculations for Germany were based on data from the Federal Statistical Office, the Ministry of Economy of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German association of digital economy enterprises Bitkom.
Traffic jam in Dusseldorf at rush hour
In its study, the Carbon Trust compared the CO баланс balance of teleworking in six countries – Germany, the UK, Sweden, Italy, Spain and the Czech Republic. The decisive role in this, according to experts, is played by the season and climatic conditions.
The reason for the reduction in CO₂ emissions is, on the one hand, a reduction in the number of commutes to work and home. On the other hand, in a lower electricity consumption due to the fact that the offices were closed or not fully used. However, these calculations did not take into account the fact that the increase in electricity consumption occurred outside the offices – in the houses and apartments of people who worked remotely at that time.
Season and geographic location
However, according to experts, energy consumption figures directly depend on the season. In particular, working in offices in the winter can be more efficient in terms of saving these resources. For example, commuting to work by rail during the colder months of the year results in lower CO работы emissions than when working from home and the associated higher energy consumption for heating homes.
Experts emphasize that climatic differences between seasons in specific countries should also be taken into account. In Germany and Sweden in winter, for example, the share of electricity used for heating is much higher than in Spain or Italy. Conversely, in the summer in Spain, more electricity is used for air conditioning systems. Therefore, here, according to the conclusions of experts, work in offices in the warm season is often more efficient than work at a remote location in terms of reducing electricity consumption and, accordingly, reducing harmful CO₂ emissions into the atmosphere.
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Author: Victor Weitz
