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Comment by rwmj | Hacker News Reader

It says in the article:

"Ty Colman, a cofounder and the chief revenue officer at Optera, a carbon-accounting firm that helps organizations quantify their emissions, said that in general, a fully remote company with no offices has the lowest impact-per-employee per year, at less than 1 metric ton of carbon-dioxide equivalent. That includes the uptick in energy used to power computers, keep the lights on, and maintain a comfortable temperature at home."

(versus 1.4 tons for hybrid and 1.7 tons for full time in the office). There's quite a lot more about the effects on the environment in the article.

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I wonder if it also factors in travel for remote employees though. Every fully remote company I’ve ever worked for has had regular in-person meetups where people fly to some central location a few times a year.

Given that a one-way flight from seattle to san francisco generates ~0.1t of CO2, and a flight from new york generates around 0.35. One or two meetups can easily blow away those savings.

And every office-based company I've ever worked for has had regular travel to shuttle people between offices or send teams to offsites. I'm not sure there are massive differences in travel in remote companies - although maybe there should be.

I guess you've only worked for big companies. Smaller ones only have one office.

Small companies are, indeed, small.

You’re missing the point: small remote = flying to meet everyone. Small with office attendance = no need to fly to meet.

I've never worked at a small remote only company that regularly flew the whole company anywhere. I've worked at one company with 75 employees or so that flew 5-10 remote engineers up to NYC to meet with the rest of the company who lived within driving distance (though they were all remote).

I doubt there are all that many people meeting the following conditions: work for small companies with one office, live far enough away from that office to need to fly, work for a company with enough extra money sitting around to fly everyone out, work for a company that wants to fly everyone out, are willing to fly out. I really doubt there are enough to have much impact on carbon emissions.

Only if it’s globally remote. There are plenty of small companies where people work from home, but nevertheless all live in close proximity

I think this only considers the direct impact of “work”.

If remote work means people switch their city flats for suburban or rural houses, the impact could reverse

Last time I checked it was roughly double, but that didn't included the fact the house could have solar which isn't really an option for an apartment.

Impact is pretty much more heating/cooling required for house and I'd imagine that would compensate at least part of that.

So that’s the building itself, but then there’s the massive impact of a non-urban home due to network spread (roads, water, electricity, shops, services etc are all less carbon efficient when spread over large surfaces per capita)

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