My ancient laptop fan was making that death-rattle sound again. You know the one – like a small helicopter trying to take off inside your computer. I’d been on video calls for nearly six hours straight, and the poor machine was basically begging for mercy. And honestly? Same. I glanced at the electricity monitor I’d installed last month (one of my better eco-experiments, though the installation process involved a minor fuse box incident we don’t need to discuss) and winced at the numbers. Working from home was supposed to be the greener option, wasn’t it? So why was my energy usage climbing faster than my houseplants die when I go on holiday?
This whole remote work revolution has been fascinating to watch from an environmental perspective. Back in 2020, when the world first lurched into widespread work-from-home arrangements, environmentalists (myself included) were practically doing cartwheels at the emissions data. Remember those photos of clear skies over previously smog-choked cities? The satellite images showing pollution levels plummeting? The wildlife wandering into urban areas like they were reclaiming territory? For about five minutes, it felt like we’d accidentally stumbled into a climate solution.
But like everything in sustainability, it’s never quite that simple, is it?
I’ve spent the last three years researching the environmental impacts of remote work – partly for my articles at Zero Emission Living, partly because I’m genuinely obsessed with figuring out how to make my own home office setup less of an energy vampire. And I’ve come to the maddening conclusion that remote work is simultaneously better AND worse for the environment than office-based work. How’s that for a useless answer?
Let’s start with the obvious benefits, because they’re significant. The biggie is commuting – or rather, the lack of it. My colleague Omar used to drive 47 miles round trip to the office every day in a car that was definitely manufactured before anyone gave a toss about fuel efficiency. That’s roughly 10,000 miles a year just getting to and from work. When I calculated his carbon footprint reduction from working at home, it was something like 3.5 tonnes of CO2 annually. That’s massive! Multiply that by millions of former commuters, and you’re talking about a significant dent in transport emissions.
There’s also the reduced need for commercial office space, which means less energy used for heating, cooling, and lighting massive buildings that are frequently half-empty anyway. I toured our magazine’s former office building last year while writing a piece on commercial energy usage, and let me tell you, the amount of electricity being used to illuminate completely empty conference rooms at 3 PM on a Tuesday would power my flat for a month. Maybe two months, actually, since I’m the type who follows my flatmates around switching off lights like some kind of electricity gremlin. (They love it. Or at least they pretend to. Actually, they definitely don’t.)
But here’s where it gets complicated. While we’ve eliminated the commute, we’ve also created millions of individual workspaces that need heating, cooling, and powering. During winter in Bristol, I’m heating just my home office for eight hours instead of sharing the heating costs with fifty colleagues in a more efficient building. That’s… not great, efficiency-wise. My first winter working from home, my energy bills went up by nearly 40%. I was basically sitting there in four jumpers, watching my breath cloud in front of my laptop, and STILL using more energy than before.
There’s also the issue of equipment duplication. The office might have had one industrial printer shared by thirty people. Now those thirty remote workers might have thirty smaller, less efficient printers. Same goes for computers, monitors, and all the other gadgets that make work possible. I’ve got two extra monitors, a printer I use maybe twice a month, and an external hard drive that runs constantly – all things I wouldn’t have needed back when I worked at the magazine office.
And we haven’t even gotten to the more complicated factors like increased residential waste generation (all those delivery packages and takeaway containers from lunch), the carbon footprint of video conferencing (surprisingly high if you’re doing it all day), and the environmental cost of creating home offices. I converted my spare room with secondhand furniture, but I know plenty of people who bought entirely new setups – desks, chairs, filing cabinets, the lot. Manufacturing and shipping all that stuff generates significant emissions.
Last year I interviewed a climate scientist who was trying to calculate the exact tipping point – how many days of remote work versus office work would create the lowest possible carbon footprint. Poor guy looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. “It depends on so many variables,” he kept saying, running his hands through his increasingly wild hair. “Commute distance, method of transport, home energy efficiency, office building type, climate zone…” He had a spreadsheet with about fifty factors and still felt it was too simplified. We settled on publishing a flowchart to help people determine their own personal tipping point, but even that ran to three pages.
So what’s the answer? How do we make remote work as green as possible? After years of experimentation (and quite a few failures), here’s what I’ve found actually works:
First, focus on your home’s energy efficiency. This makes the biggest difference and saves you money too. I finally invested in proper insulation last year after spending one too many winters working with fingerless gloves on. The energy savings paid for the installation within 18 months. If you rent like I used to, there are still options – thermal curtains, draft excluders, and those weird sticky strips you put around windows all help. My first flat was so drafty I swear the curtains moved on still days, but even basic improvements reduced my heating needs significantly.
Be strategic about heating and cooling. This winter I’ve been experimenting with heating just my office rather than the whole flat during work hours. I got this infrared panel heater that uses way less energy than my central heating and only heats objects (like me) rather than the entire air volume of the room. Game-changer. In summer, I position my desk to catch the breeze between windows and use a small fan instead of air conditioning. And yes, sometimes I just suffer a bit – put on an extra layer in winter or work in lightweight clothes in summer. Climate change requires some sacrifices, though preferably not frostbite or heatstroke.
Next up, tackle your digital footprint – it’s bigger than you think. Video calls use a shocking amount of data, which requires energy to process and store. I’ve started turning off my camera when I don’t absolutely need it on and using audio-only calls when possible. I also batch my emails instead of sending them one by one, and I’ve become ruthless about digital storage – regularly deleting unnecessary files and emails instead of letting them sit on servers somewhere, consuming energy. My friend Ruth who works in tech actually calculated that if everyone deleted just 10 unwanted emails from their inbox, it would save enough electricity to power thousands of homes for a day. Wild, right?
Equipment choices matter too. I use a laptop instead of a desktop because it uses significantly less energy. When I do need larger screens for design work, I make sure they’re Energy Star rated and turn them off completely (not just sleep mode) when not in use. I held onto my ancient printer for years out of some misguided notion that using things until they die is always best for the planet, but eventually had to admit that its inefficiency was negating any manufacturing emissions saved. The new one uses about 80% less energy and 50% less ink. Sometimes the greener choice is actually replacing old, inefficient technology.
Then there’s the way you structure your work week. If you’re doing a hybrid model (some days at home, some in the office), try to batch your office days to minimize commuting. I know people who drive to the office Monday, work from home Tuesday, back to the office Wednesday… it’s the worst of both worlds, emissions-wise! If you’re going in, make it count – schedule all your in-person meetings and collaborative work for those days.
The lunch situation is worth thinking about too. Working from home created this weird situation where I was somehow generating more food-related waste than when I went to the office, mostly because I got lazy about cooking and started ordering delivery more often. Now I meal prep on Sundays just like I used to for office lunches, which saves packaging waste and usually means I eat healthier too. My compost bin appreciates the vegetable scraps way more than the landfill would have appreciated all those plastic containers.
The trickiest part might be the social aspect, though. Humans need connection, and remote work can lead to, well, more driving around to find it. I found myself taking my laptop to cafés just to be around people, essentially creating a commute that didn’t exist before. Now I try to be intentional – working from local cafés I can walk to, or coordinating with friends who also work remotely so we can share a space (and heating costs) one or two days a week.
I’d be lying if I said I’ve perfected the sustainable home office. Just last week I realized I’ve had a power strip running 24/7 that powers exactly nothing because I moved my setup and forgot to unplug it. Yesterday I caught myself running the heat, a space heater, AND wearing a heated vest all at once because Bristol decided to audition for a role in the next Ice Age movie. Sustainability is always a work in progress.
But that’s the beauty of this remote work experiment we’re all part of – we get to design it intentionally, learning from the mistakes of traditional office setups. My carbon footprint working from home is about 30% lower than when I commuted to an office, even accounting for increased home energy use. That’s not perfect, but it’s progress. And if there’s one thing being an environmentalist has taught me, it’s that progress rarely looks perfect.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go investigate why my electricity monitor is beeping aggressively at me again. Probably that old laptop fan finally achieving liftoff.
