News release

From: PLOS

Does teleworking reduce carbon emissions? It depends on how you do it

Study finds reduced commuting emissions can be offset by intense home workspace utility use

Teleworking such as working from home, coworking or working from other third places can reduce carbon emissions by removing the commute, but if you’re not careful, this benefit will be offset by the carbon cost of the work-related housing space, according to a study published July 15, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS Climate by Jana Z’Rotz of Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland and colleagues.

Teleworking has become increasingly popular in recent years, and it is often viewed as a way to reduce carbon emissions (CO2eq) by cutting down on worker commutes. However, it has also been suggested that these benefits may be countered by increased use of utilities in the home workspace. In this study, Z’Rotz and colleagues used a survey to collect data and estimate the carbon cost of patterns of commuting, home office use, and use of information and communications technology among teleworkers.

The survey was available online to Swiss participants in late 2024, and it received over 1,000 responses from people who had teleworked within the preceding month.

The team’s calculations showed that more frequent teleworkers did produce fewer emissions via commuting as expected, but that this improvement was largely offset by the increased carbon cost of work-related housing and technology use, especially when teleworkers used a separate home office space. Therefore, teleworking did not have a consistent overall positive effect on work-related emissions.

These results demonstrate that teleworking does not automatically reduce carbon emissions, and that businesses and individuals hoping to reduce their carbon footprint should make additional considerations, such as more compact at-home workspaces or multi-person remote workspaces. The authors note that these results offer an initial overview, but they were based on simplified emission estimates and lacked a control group of non-teleworkers. They conclude that future studies should expand the data to identify the most environment- and worker-friendly options.

The authors add: “Among teleworkers, a higher number of teleworking days and having a separate home office room are positively associated with CO2eq emissions related to housing space and [information and communication technology].”