Hacker News Reader

> is better for the environment

I'm not sure that is always the case. When everybody is in the office, you save on shared resources such as lighting, printing and heating. Also, a certain percentage of remote workers will take the car during the day anyway, to buy lunch or groceries.

View on HN

I can't imagine an office full of people driving their gas vehicles 50+ miles per day creates less pollution than those people being at home. Lighting costs are extremely marginal these days, so really heating/AC would be the big driver.

I know prices may not be a perfect corollary to pollution but people driving that much to work are pretty likely to spend more money fueling their vehicles than they are on electric + gas for their homes.

The vast majority of people don’t stop all power consumption at home just because they’re not at home. Even modern thermostats like Nest don’t save as much as they claim, usually.

These saving are completely blown away later that night when the lighting has to stay on so the office is not pitch black and the heating has to stay on so the pipes don't freeze. In what world is heating and lighting another building more efficient than not doing that?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com