"Want to work fewer days from the office? You could be doing the planet a favor.

Fully remote workers could produce less than half the climate-warming emissions of people who spend their days in offices, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In an analysis of various work scenarios, people’s behaviors and sources of emissions, researchers found that switching from working onsite to working from home full-time may reduce a person’s carbon footprint by more than 50 percent. Hybrid schedules where people work remotely for two to four days a week could also cut emissions by 11 to 29 percent, according to the study.

The findings help shed more light on the factors that can influence the environmental and climate effects of different work models, said Longqi Yang, an applied research manager at Microsoft and one of the paper’s authors."

Allyson Chiu reports for the Washington Post September 18, 2023. [2]