Telecommuting and environmental policy - lessons from the Ecommute program

Telecommuting and Environmental Policy

¹Scenarios as defined in Table 12.

Some interesting results show up in a comparison of Tables 12 and 13. The emissions
reductions in Table 12 are strongly determined by the overall number of participants in the program.
Thus, the emissions reductions in Philadelphia, in scenario 1, are more than 18 times the reductions in
Los Angeles. On a per telecommuting day basis, however, Table 13 shows that the two cities yield
approximately the same emissions reduction. This result is driven by the relatively high number of
telecommuting days in Philadelphia, which is caused, in turn, by the fact that the average participant in
the ecommute program in Philadelphia telecommutes a large percentage of his total workdays. Denver,
which has the largest total emissions reductions (Table 12) because of the large number of people
enrolled, also has the largest reductions on a per telecommuting day basis as well (Table 13). This
result appears to primarily result from emissions factors. The overall average emissions factors for
VOC and NOx across all five cities are 1.308 g/mi and 1.109 g/mi, respectively. In Denver, the averages
are 1.530 g/mi (VOC) and 1.242 g/mi (NOx).

In general, a combination of factors comes into play in Tables 12 and 13: number of
participants in the program, number of days each participant telecommutes, emissions factors of the
vehicles owned by those participants, and distances traveled to work. It is impossible to sort out all of
the conflicting influences on emissions reductions and emission reductions per telecommuting day.
Overall, across all the pilot cities, an average of slightly more than one-tenth of a pound each of VOC
and NOx is reduced per day of teleworking.

We can use these figures in Table 13 to calculate the number of teleworkers that would be
needed to achieve a hypothetical target annual emissions reduction from telecommuting. Table 14
shows the results of this calculation, assuming a target of 25 tons of VOCs.²¹ Results in the first column
are obtained assuming that each worker telecommutes the percentage of days given in Table 9. These
percentages range from 17.9% for Houston up to over 50% for Philadelphia, or slightly less than 1 day
per week up to 2 ½ days per week. Column 2 results are obtained using the average of 35% that holds
across all cities. We also assume that there are 250 workdays in a year and that each worker would
otherwise have driven alone to work on all of the days that he telecommuted (Scenario 1 in Tables 12
and 13).

To achieve the 25-ton target, Philadelphia would need 3,268 people to telecommute, assuming
that each one telecommutes, on average, 50.8% of the time (see Table 9) - i.e., about 2 ½ days per
week. Denver’s number is roughly the same - 3290 - but those people would be telecommuting only
38.6% of the time (see Table 9). If we use the overall 5-city average of 35% for Philadelphia rather than
the relatively high 50.8%, we find that many more people are needed to reach the target, approximately
4,700. In Houston, if telecommuters work at home only 18% of the time, as Table 9 showed, then
nearly 10,500 telecommuters are needed to reach the VOC target. If each telecommuter works at home
35% of the time, however, only about half as many people are needed. The two columns of the table
simply highlight the trade-off that exists, for emissions reductions purposes, in number of people
telecommuting and the frequency with which they do so.

²¹ We cannot simultaneously target both NOx and VOC so we just look at a scenario with a VOC target.
Obviously, some NO_x reductions will be achieved as well.

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