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M-1A-6 - Teleworking

This mitigation option covers both teleworking (i.e. working from home) and videoconferencing as an alternative to travelling to a meeting.

Teleworking is outlined in section 10.2.3 (digitalisation) of (IPCC AR6 WG3 2022)1.

Mitigation Objective

The primary goal is for a utilisation shift to reduce light-duty vehicle distances travelled in a city by means of digital solutions such as increased teleworking and videoconferencing.

Mitigation Potential

Potential

The AR6 report indicates a conservative mitigation potential of 1% of total light-duty vehicle emissions.

A move towards a digital economy that allows workers to work and access information remotely could reduce travel demand. Case studies suggest that teleworking could reduce transport emissions by 20% in some instances, but likely by 1%, at most, across the entire transport system (Roth et al. 2008; O’Keefe et al. 2016; Shabanpour et al. 2018; O’Brien and Aliabadi 2020).

- (IPCC AR6 WG3 2022)1

We found that telecommuting has the potential to reduce GHG and PM2.5 emissions by up to 0.7% and 1.14%, respectively.

- (Shabanpour et al. 2018)2

Modelling

This mitigation method has been modelled with the following Transition Elements:

Primary Reference

The primary reference for this mitigation measure is (IPCC AR6 WG3 2022)1.

Secondary References

Analysis of telecommuting behavior and impacts on travel demand and the environment

This study (Shabanpour et al. 2018)2 implemented activity-based models to simulate the potential impacts of telecommuting in three distinct scenarios: a base-case of 12% of workers with flexible work schedules allowing for telecommuting, vs 25% and 50% levels. The conclusion was that in the best scenario, flex-50, GHG emission reductions of 0.7% was possible.

Dematerialization Through Electronic Media?

Although this study (Coroama, Moberg, and Hilty 2014)3 focusses on dematerialization, the impact of remote meetings is also discussed in depth. The paper notes that macro level analysis of telepresence systems could indicate a mitigation potential as high as 1% of total global emissions which would translate to approximately 6% of global transport sector emissions and 9.6% of road based emissions (assuming that the transport sector accounts for 15% of global emissions and 69% of this is road based).

  1. IPCC AR6 WG3. 2022. Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Edited by Priyadarshi R. Shukla, Jim Skea, Raphael Slade, Alaa Al Khourdajie, Renée van Diemen, David McCollum, Minal Pathak, et al. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157926. ↩↩↩

  2. Shabanpour, Ramin, Nima Golshani, Mohammad Tayarani, Joshua Auld, and Abolfazl Mohammadian. 2018. “Analysis of Telecommuting Behavior and Impacts on Travel Demand and the Environment.” Transportation Research Part D Transport and Environment 62 (April). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2018.04.003. ↩↩

  3. Coroama, Vlad, Åsa Moberg, and Lorenz Hilty. 2014. “Dematerialization Through Electronic Media?” In Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 310:405–21. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09228-7\24. ↩

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