Telework
In nearly every economic sector ICT can be used for the dematerialization of physical products
or processes. Teleworking has an effect on
the transport sector, since the travel ways to and from offices can be reduced by working from
home. The Telework Research Network
published following figures about the saving potential
induced by teleworking in the United States of America [1]:
- Savings of over 280 million barrels of oil.
- Greenhouse gas savings of 53 million tons, which would be over 21 percent of the USA’s
aim of reductions by 2020.
- Savings of about 1 billion dollar in highway maintenance, due to reductions of wear.
- Companies could save 200 billion dollar in office buildings, including utilization and
maintenance costs.
- The resulting electricity savings from offices could power 900,000 homes per year.
- Reductions in traffic related injuries and deaths, resulting in cost savings of 12 billion
dollar a year.
- Each employee could save up to between 1,800 and 6,800 dollar in transportation and
work-related costs.
- While 40 percent of employees in the USA have jobs that would allow teleworking, only
2 percent work from home most of the time.
In total the extensive use of telecommuting could save more than 650 Billion Dollar a year.
According to the authors of the referenced website, these figures are a result of synthesizing 250
case studies, a number of reviews and interviews with virtual employers and their employees, as
well as top researchers on the topic [1].
Also The
Climate Group states in it’s SMART 2020 Report that more than half of
the emissions saving potential of dematerialization by ICT is made up of
the proliferation of telecommuting. In numbers this would be 0.26
GtCO2e in 2020 globally [2]. Other researchers assume
the potential savings in greenhouse gas emissions due to telecommuting
to be 588.2 million tons
just for the USA [3]. One of the major environmental benefits of
telecommuting arises from reduced work-related travel. Due to the
possibility for people to increasingly work from home, this
“could provide help in de-coupling transport growth and economic growth”
[
4]. The reduction
in physical traffic volume may be partly offset by additional trips in
leisure time. Furthermore
telecommuting could be a reason to move to rural areas, which would
result in longer distance
travel at days when working at the office [3]. These coherences can be
termed as rebound
effects. Studies approved that in some cases teleworkers undertake
additional trips, that would
usually be combined with traveling to and from workplace (e.g.
shopping), which offset about
half of the travel savings in average [4]. Taking all the
considerations into account, an increase
of telecommuting would have a significant positive effect on the
environment.
Telework is also a concept of dematerialization in the buildings sector. Studies show that a
significant number of workers working from home at three days a week could lead to energy
savings of 20 to 50 percent, even when the resulting increase of energy demand in homes is
considered [2]. Telecommuting or telework was enabled by the distribution of broadband
networks, that allow to transfer large amounts of data. It means “working remotely via the use
of ICT solutions” [2], while the remote workplace is usually represented by the private home.
The energy and emissions savings are composed of reduced travel routes and the possibility for
companies to build and maintain smaller offices. This requires the sharing of workplaces, which
makes at least three days of teleworking a week necessary. The space in typical office buildings
is utilized only about 18 percent of total time [5]. This fact shows that the improvement
of utilization of existing space, could lead to reduced demand for new buildings and therefore
to a significant reduction of emissions, arising from construction, utilization and maintenance
of new buildings. A precondition to energy and emissions savings by telecommuting in the
buildings sector is, that teleworkers give up their office spaces, or at least share them. Otherwise
reductions in carbon emissions by telecommuting can be expected from reduced travel only [4].
A research work done in the USA is assuming that a home office would bring energy savings
of about 3500 kWh on average compared to a commercial office. This would lead to savings
of 46.6 billion kWh of electricity, or 56.8 tons of CO2e per year, at a supposed number of 13.3
million telecommuters in the USA [3].
Videoconferencing
A second example for the dematerialization
of travel ways is videoconferencing. This approach replaces physical
meetings by providing ICT equipment for video-telephony over the
Internet. There are studies that claim that significant reductions in
emissions could be achieved by
reducing physical traffic by videoconferencing [6]. In this context it
has to be mentioned, that
approaches like videoconferencing and telecommuting have already been
existing for a while
and have not been adopted as widely as it could have been expected
during this period [2]. In
2005 only 3,9 percent of the population of the 25 member states of the
European Union regularly
used the Internet for video- or audio conferencing [4]. This shows that
the level of acceptance
is an important issue for the adoption of ICT developments. Therefore it
is essential that the ICT
infrastructure allows an adequate user experience while
videoconferencing for example, so that
it gets a viable alternative to physical meetings [6].
A
research work of 2004 from Norway on the impact of videoconferencing on
business
travel determined, that the substitution rate of business air travel by
videoconferencing is only
2.5 to 3.5 percent [7]. The author also claimed, that videoconferencing
is mainly used for intracompany communication. This fact suggests that
personal contact is still the preferred way of
conducting business between companies and maybe will remain dominant
over virtual meetings.
The main reasons for companies for the adoption of videoconferencing are
time and cost savings
(cf. figure 1) [7]. It can be hypothesized that a significant
increase in travel costs could be
a reason for companies to utilize videoconferencing technology more
extensive. Several case
studies showed that the potential carbon savings arising from the use of
teleconferencing (audio
and video), can be numbered as about 15 percent of the company’s
business travel [4].
Figure 1: Reasons for videoconferencing (a higher score means more important) [7]
References
[2] The Climate Group. Smart 2020: Enabling the low
carbon economy in the information age. Technical report, The Climate
Group on behalf of the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), 2008.
[3] J.P. Fuhr and S. Pociask. Broadband and Telecommuting: Helping the U.S. Environment and the Economy. Low Carbon Economy, vol.2:41–47, 2011.
[5] B. Tomlinson. Greening through IT - Information Technology for Environmental Sustainability. The MIT Press, 2010.
[7] J.M. Denstadli. Impacts of videoconferencing on business travel: the norwegian experience. Journal of Air Transport Management, 10(6):371 – 376, 2004.
