Tech and financial companies leading efforts to cut climate changing emissions are finding a new challenge from remote work: the CO2 spewing out of home offices.
Six of those reported detailed figures, showing their half a million workers collectively emitted the equivalent of 134,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide in about the first year of the pandemic. That is equivalent to consuming 15 million gallons of gasoline or burning 67,000 tonnes of coal. Facebook, now Meta Platforms Inc, calculated that employees through commutes and remote work produced more than a tonne of CO2 per person in 2020, down from 2 tonnes the year before - when just commuting was counted.
Salesforce and Alphabet Inc's Google excluded home-office electricity from their 100 per cent goals as they weigh different initiatives for home use. Both, though, buy carbon credits to offset estimated emissions from telework. But if heating a home office requires heating an entire house, how are emissions counted? And how to account for a headquarters office that is available but unused?