Getting a bit touchy watching the gas pump nudge $100 as you slake the thirst of your rapidly depreciating GM Subdivision?
Feeling your blood pressure rise in gridlocked traffic, knowing how much of that precious fuel is being wasted because “rush hour” is the most evil of all oxymorons?
Grumbling about those steakhouse outings being replaced with Hamburger Helper Du Jour as gasoline’s share of your existing budget just doubled?

Well, if T. Boone Pickens can be a self-serving energy messiah, so can I. Here’s my solution for soaring oil and gasoline prices: Everybody telecommute.

OK, that won’t work for burger flippers and cleaning people and Wal-Mart greeters, but there are a lot—a heckuva lot—of us who can get the job done just as easily at home 1-2 days a week. Maybe even do a better job.

A recent study by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)* found that telecommuting has “terrific” potential for reducing US energy consumption. Right now, 3.9 million people in the US work from home at least 1 day a week. Figuring an average 22-mile commute, this saves 840 million gallons of gasoline per year. OK, that’s a drop in the bucket compared with the 146 billion gallons of gasoline the US consumes each year. But the study also pointed out that as many as 53 million people could take up telecommuting. What if they all telecommuted 1 day a week? That’s an almost 8% reduction in annual gasoline use. OK, the math is oversimplified because there are other qualifying factors, but common sense dictates that millions of people not commuting an extra billion miles a year will sharply reduce gasoline consumption. What if we all worked at home twice a week?

Let’s go viral on this: A National Telecommute Day once a month, to start. Let’s see what happens. I’m betting gasoline prices will fall, as the Telecommuting movement spreads to more people and more days, and $4 per gallon will seem a grim memory. And maybe the burger flippers can then afford the gasoline to go to a $7/hour job. It sure won’t take as long to have an effect on oil consumption as will waiting for everyone to buy a GM Volt (after you, please).

But what would mass telecommuting do to the workplace? To worker productivity? To worker morale? To career prospects? To home life? A recent study by Penn State University** busted some myths about the supposed negative aspects of telecommuting, concluding that the practice improved productivity, enhanced morale, reduced conflicts between work and family, did not damage career prospects, and did not (if limited to 1 or 2 days) harm workplace relationships (actually, I can think of some workplace relationships that would have been improved had certain folks stayed at home to work). The study didn’t address the health benefits of telecommuting, but anyone regularly commuting to work in, say, Houston, can testify to that. Can I hear an amen from the Katy Freeway crowd?

Obviously, we’d need management buy-in for mass telecommuting to work. For the control freak managers out there grabbing your little steel stress balls right now, please chill. You can still set deadlines, monitor online activity, and set up your Excel sheets with lots of shiny new benchmarks when your minions work at home. You can even email them every hour to ask them what they’re working on.

Hmmm. Happier, healthier, more productive employees with happier families, along with energy savings and a shot in the arm to the economy. What a radical concept.

Of course, there are downsides. HMOs and Big Pharma will take a hit when all the telecommuters get happier and healthier. And Social Security will get strained further when all of us telecommuting Boomers live longer (remember, Gen-Xers, you’ll have us out of your hair more).

Actually, the CEA (also no stranger to enlightened self-interest, as expanded telecommuting will sell a bunch of laptops) study focused more on its carbon emissions reductions than on its energy price effects.

The study found that the current level of telecommuting saves the equivalent energy of the amount of electricity used by about 1 million US households each year. It also reduces carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to removing 2 million vehicles from the road every year.

The CEA study took into account increased home-based carbon emissions resulting from telecommuting and found that they were more than offset by the savings in gasoline consumption and, in some cases, part of the energy consumption associated with commercial office space.

Wow. Lower gasoline prices. Economic boost. Improved productivity. Enhanced worker morale. Happier, healthier employees.
And now reduced carbon emissions, which could have an additional benefit:

It might get Al Gore to shut up.

Tags: carbon emissions, gasoline prices, oil prices, telecommuting

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