Putting in Perspective the Contribution of Transportation to the Environmental Effects of Telework

Telework has been proposed as a possible remedy to traffic and air pollution problems. This paper presents a model of telework’s direct air pollution implications by quantifying personal and public transportation, office and home electronic equipment use, lighting, heating and cooling effects. An example scenario is created based on data from the National Telework Survey to assess the environmental effects of transportation as well as the other model components in order to identify the parameters that are most likely to counteract the anticipated transportation benefits. The results differ based on local climate since the energy use associated with heating and cooling is different. The analysis reveals that the non-transportation components of the model are also significant. While CO2 and NOx emissions associated with electronic equipment use appear to be comparable in the home and the company office, along with SO2 emissions, they are found to be higher for the company office than for the home office in the summer, largely on the account of cooling energy use. The assumed telework scenario does not eliminate the company office impacts while it incurs additional home office-related impacts. Passenger vehicle (as the most common mode of transportation) and light rail emissions (as the lowest) combined with warm and cold week effects reveal a difference in CO2 emissions in favor of light rail. However, accounting for home heating and cooling, telecommuting emissions during winter when the mode of transportation is light rail are comparable to the impacts observed in summer when driving a passenger vehicle. The example scenario suggests that the minimization of environmental impacts requires a careful selection and evaluation of all of the parameters of a telecommuting program. Additionally, it shows that latent demand combined with non-work induced travel may prevent savings normally expected from a telecommuting program. In that case, the only savings may come from the home and office components of the model, if at all. The analysis performed in this paper reveals that the environmental success of a telecommuting program is a function of the scale of implementation and a detailed assessment of all of the parameters of the model. Erasmia Kitou, Arpad Horvath, Eric Masanet 3