I was challenged on this by a client recently, who asked “what about the additional heating of your home?”

So I did a bit of analysis (it being wot I do..) This is a superficial analysis – just looking at the commute and the additional home heating. I’ll do a more detailed model for all costs (electricity to run your home computer etc – although many of these are offset by the fact that you’d be running a computer if you were in the office anyway).

Getting to grips with a home-worker’s CO2 Footprint

So… And this will vary according to your circumstances, but here are mine.

If I commuted to the office every day, my commute would involve a 5 mile car journey to the local railway station, a 50 mile trip into london and a short walk from Waterloo to my office.

So… that’s 10 miles a day by car, and 100 miles / day by train (because I’m going there and back)

For simplicity, I’m assuming 200 commute days a year. So that’s 2000 car miles, and 20,000 train miles.

In CO2 terms that works out (using the calculator at Carbon Footprint ) as ;

Car – .844 tonnes / year

Rail – 1.938 tonnes / year

In cost terms it works out as -

Car (assuming a generous 45 miles / gal.. which my American mande 2 litre Beetle does not do on short runs) – £213.33

Rail (for a season ticket) – £4132

How does this compare with my home-worker CO2 footprint?

My central heating bill has risen by approx £10 / month. So that’s an annual cost of £120 and an annual release of CO2 of .055 tonnes.

So comparing the two options…

Commuter Gary – 2.78 tonnes of CO2 (at a cost of £4345 per year)
Homeworker Gary – .055 tonnes (at a cost of $120 per year).

So by not commuting, using just this rather simplistic and limited set of digits -

I’m releasing 50 times less CO2, and spending 36 times less on travel.

Go figure!

I’m going to write a little php script so you can do this yourself, since it’s unlikely that you have the same car / commute as me…