The rise of teleworking certainly doesn’t help. Quite backwards that instead of cooling one big well insulated office building you have companies sending everyone home where each individual worker heats & cools their (often uninsulated) home.
Any city that still hasn’t got their shit together & built a cycling infra in the next ~5-10 yrs should be ghost-towned. Those cities are not participating in society. Nonetheless, the burden of a car commute on the environment is shadowed by the cost of heating and cooling a house for a full day.
The problem is corporations are happy to send people home all year round just to cut their own energy costs, esp. in the non-temperate climate periods when the collective on-site energy efficiency is most needed. That’s what the corporate bottom line dictates. Staff are happy to take that lifestyle at the cost of energy inefficiency. There’s no policy or mechanism anywhere to reverse that and discourage teleworking when the outdoor temp is outside temperate ranges.
The rise of teleworking certainly doesn’t help. Quite backwards that instead of cooling one big well insulated office building you have companies sending everyone home where each individual worker heats & cools their (often uninsulated) home.
Yeah, there’s a transport/home energy use tradeoff there.
Any city that still hasn’t got their shit together & built a cycling infra in the next ~5-10 yrs should be ghost-towned. Those cities are not participating in society. Nonetheless, the burden of a car commute on the environment is shadowed by the cost of heating and cooling a house for a full day.
Heating an cooling impact is incredibly dependent on location and season. Work-from-home is lower energy at least seasonally in a lot of places.
The problem is corporations are happy to send people home all year round just to cut their own energy costs, esp. in the non-temperate climate periods when the collective on-site energy efficiency is most needed. That’s what the corporate bottom line dictates. Staff are happy to take that lifestyle at the cost of energy inefficiency. There’s no policy or mechanism anywhere to reverse that and discourage teleworking when the outdoor temp is outside temperate ranges.