Remote work in the U.S. could reduce millions of tons of carbon emissions, but it might come with a cost no one expects

A recent study highlights that remote work has the potential to significantly reduce carbon emissions from car travel, but it could also result in substantial financial losses for public transit systems.

Researchers from the University of Florida, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Peking University analyzed post-pandemic remote work trends and transportation behaviors to assess how cities might achieve sustainability goals by encouraging remote work.

The study found that a 10% increase in remote workers could lead to a 10% reduction in carbon emissions from the transportation sector, equivalent to nearly 200 million tons of carbon dioxide annually across the U.S., due to fewer car trips. However, this same increase in remote work would also cause a $3.7 billion decline in public transit fare revenue nationwide, representing a 27% drop.

Currently, about 14% of the workforce works exclusively from home, while up to half of all employees may work remotely at least part-time, according to various surveys. Shenhao Wang, Ph.D., a professor of urban planning at the University of Florida and supervisor of the study, noted, “Transit agencies need to be very concerned. Yet overall, we would expect less energy consumption from reduced car travel. So the picture is very complicated, and whether the effects are positive or negative depends on the stakeholder.”

Urban planners have long viewed remote work as a strategy to alleviate traffic congestion and lower carbon emissions. However, before the COVID-19 pandemic, analyzing the impacts of remote work was challenging due to its limited adoption. The pandemic-driven surge in remote work provided researchers with an opportunity to study its effects on urban mobility.

The study, which covered the period from April 2020 to October 2022, utilized data from Google on remote work patterns, information from the Federal Highway Administration on car travel, and a national database on transit ridership. By correlating transportation behavior with fluctuations in remote work across states and metropolitan areas, the researchers assessed how increased remote work influenced car travel and public transit usage.

They found that public transit ridership declined more than twice as fast as car travel in response to the same reduction in on-site workers. Yunhan Zheng, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher at MIT and lead author of the study, explained, “People mostly rely on transit to go to work. When people start to work from home, their need to commute is largely reduced.

So, a large portion of transit ridership was no longer needed. On the other hand, many people rely on vehicles for trips other than going to work. They go shopping, they go to restaurants and leisure activities. Those activities may not necessarily disappear when people work from home.”

Zheng added that these differences between driving and transit behavior could pose financial challenges for transit agencies. “This may pose a challenge for transit agencies in terms of their financial sustainability, so they may need to take some actions to cope with this. For example, they could provide more services during off-peak hours in residential areas to better serve remote workers.”

The findings were published on April 9 in Nature Cities. The researchers plan to continue studying the effects of remote work on urban mobility as new data emerges and employment trends evolve beyond the immediate impacts of the pandemic.

Sources - 

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/03/30/about-a-third-of-us-workers-who-can-work-from-home-do-so-all-the-time/
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/how-many-americans-are-really-working-remotely
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-024-00057-1