Why aren’t green groups pushing remote work?

Driving fell during the pandemic, while air quality improved

You’re reading Transit Time, a weekly newsletter for Charlotte people who leave the house. Cars, buses, light rail, bikes, scooters … if you use it to get around the city, we write about it. Transit Time is produced in partnership between The Charlotte Ledger and WFAE.

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Working from home helps reduce vehicle emissions, a new study says; But momentum is building for a return to the office

Vehicle emissions account for the biggest share of air pollution. But the effects on the environment of in-person vs. remote work are seldom discussed.

by Steve Harrison
WFAE

Last fall, researchers from Cornell University and Microsoft published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about the carbon emissions of people who work from home compared with those who commute to the office.

Not surprisingly, they found work-from-home employees accounted for 54% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than people who worked in the office.

For people who worked remotely only one day a week, the drop was small — just 2%.

But a hybrid schedule still produced some sizable savings: Working from home remotely two to four days a week reduced that person’s emissions by up to 29% compared with those making the daily commute.

That study came to mind after Mecklenburg County Manager Dena Diorio ordered all county employees back in the office, five days a week, starting this summer. She said customer service has suffered under a hybrid schedule. She also said it wasn’t fair that some employees could work remotely while others had no choice but to do their jobs in person.

Diorio’s memo outlining the change made no mention of environmental pros and cons. The county’s Environmental Leadership Policy, among other things, calls for the county to “implement environmental practices in day-to-day business operations” and to “provide employees with opportunities and incentives to learn and practice environmentally sound behaviors.”

Did Mecklenburg commissioners ever discuss with each other — or with staff — the environmental downsides to bringing everyone back?

“Never,” said Commissioner Susan Rodriguez-McDowell, who said the return-to-office policy was instituted by Diorio without input from commissioners.

She said some upset county employees have e-mailed the county over their concerns about losing the ability to work from home. One of the complaints: A daily commute for office workers isn’t particularly green.

Overall, air quality in Mecklenburg has improved over the last decade, according to county data. The number of days of “good” air quality spiked in 2020, the year that many workers and students stayed at home because of Covid, and stayed at multi-year highs in 2021 and 2022 as remote work persisted. (Mecklenburg County chart)

Tug-of-war

The past two years have been a tug-of-war between workers who enjoy the flexibility of working from home versus bosses who think collaboration and possibly productivity are suffering. (Many companies also have expensive real estate that’s often sitting unused.)

But in the debate over hybrid work — whether it should stay, and if so, in what form — environmentalists have been mostly silent.

They have been trying unsuccessfully for decades to get people to drive less, only to stumble on a solution thanks to the pandemic.

In Charlotte, I have seen no campaign or plea for employers to keep hybrid work as a way to reduce traffic congestion and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

I haven’t found any national effort, either.

I asked CleanAire NC executive director Jeffrey Robbins about that. He said his group has hybrid work, with only two days required in the office.

He added that his group would, theoretically, “push” for more people to have a hybrid schedule but hasn’t. He said he would reach out to the group Sustain Charlotte about working together to encourage hybrid work and “get some momentum.”

Sustain Charlotte doesn’t appear interested.

The group’s executive director, Shannon Binns, said in a statement to Transit Time: “We encourage employers to encourage and incent their employees to ride transit, carpool, bike, scoot, or walk to work rather than drive alone — and use their influence to support greater investment in the infrastructure needed to make these modes safer and more convenient. Both of these actions will help reduce our local climate pollution.”

The main thrust of Sustain Charlotte and other environmental activists has been the city’s 2040 Plan, which was approved by the Charlotte City Council in 2021. By giving developers more freedom to build, the plan — along with the more detailed Unified Development Ordinance — aims to create a more dense, walkable city so people don’t have to drive as much. Another goal is to lower housing costs.

They also support the city’s proposed $13.5 billion transportation plan, which will spend most of the money on new rail projects and expanding the bus system so — again — people don’t have to drive as much. 

But here is a conundrum: While work-from-home already gets people out of their cars, it also depresses transit ridership. That makes it harder to justify spending more money on new trains and buses.

(In Charlotte, transit ridership is still about 60% of pre-pandemic levels. It’s about half of what it was a decade ago.)

So if you want to strengthen the case for the city’s mobility plan, you need more people working in the office, making road congestion worse so people will turn to transit.

The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey says that, nationwide, 3.8% of workers use public transportation and that 11.7% work from home. In Mecklenburg County, 2.1% use public transportation, and 21.5% work from home. Even before the pandemic, Mecklenburg County had a higher share of at-home workers than the national average.

The city of Charlotte’s sustainability initiative has a long list of things people can do to help the earth, such as “avoid printing paper, or when needed print front and back” or to “take shorter showers, turn off the water when brushing your teeth” and to “purchase local produce.”

Under transportation, the city advises people to use transit, consider an electric vehicle and carpool.

It does not mention the idea of hybrid work as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

Working from home, in fact, is never mentioned.

Billions of miles of less driving

Of course, people working from home don’t abandon their cars.

They may take more frequent trips to the store. They use more energy in their homes. Those factors were accounted for in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study.

They may take more weekend trips, by plane or car, because they are not shackled to their cubicle. (Weekend trips weren’t a part of the study.)

Overall, the study concluded: “Remote workers could have a 54% lower carbon footprint compared to onsite workers; hybrid workers with two to four workdays at home can reduce [greenhouse gas] emissions by 11 to 29%.” It added that working from home “can help relieve congestion during peak hours in high-density commuting zones, which may improve fuel economy and mitigate climate change.” (You can read the full study here.)

The basic math behind hybrid work is hard to beat.

A Weddington resident working uptown would drive 50 miles roundtrip. Under a regular work schedule, that’s 250 miles a week.

Working from home two days a week saves 100 miles. Even if that person takes an extra trip to the store on those days, that’s still a lot fewer miles driven.

Looking at the issue from 30,000 feet, the number of miles driven nationwide fell by 15% during the pandemic, from nearly 3.3 trillion miles a year to around 2.8 trillion in 2020-2021.

In the last few months, the number of vehicle miles driven has recovered to pre-pandemic levels — though not to the level of driving we would have likely had if there was no Covid.

The number of vehicle miles traveled nationally dipped during Covid as more people worked from home, according to data from the U.S. Federal Highway Administration.

In fact, Americans have probably driven 1 trillion fewer miles over the last four years had there not been a pandemic. Work from home is probably the biggest reason.

Data scientist Hannah Ritchie is a researcher at Our World in Data at Oxford University. She writes about pragmatic ways to solve the climate crisis.

Her view on work from home as a way to reduce emissions?

“If companies can function just as well remotely (which many can) then it sounds good to me, for multiple reasons including carbon,” she said.

Steve Harrison is a reporter with WFAE, Charlotte’s NPR news source. Reach him at sharrison@wfae.com.

Related Charlotte Ledger articles:

• “Charlotte’s big work from home boom” (Oct. 9, 2019)

• “We’re driving less. So how’s the air?” (April 25, 2020)

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