Due to an increasing number of employees working remotely, we have improved our Work From Home (WFH) emissions calculations model to better represent the types of activities, technologies and energy types involved in electricity consumption at home. The new model is sensitive to the geography of the Facility and pulls from real-life databases on household electricity use, adjusted to the national average working hours and WFH statistics.
Updates to Work From Home Electricity emissions
You are likely to see an increase in your WFH Electricity emissions, as the previous model only included the use of a screen and a laptop. Studies (1, 2) indicate however that people are using more energy at WFH than at the office. For example, cooking and watching TV are not common practises at the office, and are therefore adding to WFH emissions. Single, perhaps bigger, coffee makers are replaced by several individual machines, increasing the overall energy use.
Updates to Work From Home Heating emissions
You are likely to see a decrease in your WFH Heating emissions, as the calculation model works with an updated dataset on fuel used for heating. Additionally, the fuel emission factor per heating kWh used, and the number of heating hours got improved. Heating is not used every hour of the cold (heating) months. Heating is used during the day, and WFH increases this, but heating is on during the full work hours of 8h (average) only during the coldest months.