Christopher Nickson posts on Digital Trends (found via Northern Telework) about a report that was just released that investigated the affect that telecommuting has on the environment. While lots of energy (and burned fossil fuel) is saved when a worker does not drive into work but rather walks down the hall to their home-office, it turns out that 80% of this saved energy is used up by increased energy costs incurred by the worker in their home (or to put it more positively, as Debora Ng writes, telecommuting means a 20% savings of energy). Additionally:

However, more powerful new home computers use more energy, and with routers and servers on 24/7, telecommuting has its own green issues to address if it’s going to make a real contribution to the bigger ecological picture. Additionally, some labor activists are worried that telecommuting could also lead to more outsourcing in cheaper economies, taking downsizing to a new level.

So telecommuting, which is already a growing trend, could have very positive benefits for global warming, the report concludes, but only if it’s carried out “in a planned and managed way.”

This entry was posted on Monday, May 28th, 2007 by Yaakov Ellis and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Tags: energy, environment
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