Welcome to episode 378 of the Energy Talks podcast. I'm energy journalist, Markham Hislop. One of the most interesting developments during the COVID 19 pandemic was office employees working from home. This sparked a vigorous debate about the extent to which telework decreased transportation greenhouse gas emissions. Carleton University recently published a report titled quantifying the net impact of hybrid work on greenhouse gas emissions associated with workplace and residential energy consumption.
I'll be speaking to one of its authors, Farzhan Sipanta. Welcome to Energy Talks, Farzhan.
Hello, Markham. Thank you so much for having me.
Well, this has been a very interesting debate, and I always just assumed that, taking cars off the road for the morning and evening, you know, late afternoon commute would be a a big net positive for energy consumption and greenhouse gases. Is that was that just a give us an overview of your study, and maybe you can give us the high level view of whether, that I'm my assumption is correct or incorrect.
Yeah. Well, the assumption about transportation is absolutely correct, but let me start by telling you more about the study first because it's it goes beyond transportation. Right? What we did is we worked with 3 federal departments, CRA, PSPC, and TBS, and we asked their employees, how their daily commutes are, how their non work related commutes are, how their their life in their homes are, what's the preferred thermostat temperature, about the Internet use, and also about their offices. What really matters when it comes to telework is that you might have potential savings in one of those domains, which is transportation or, which is, like, taken for taken as granted.
And then because you're spending more time at home, the energy increase in home might offset potential savings from transportation. Right? Or the same might happen for the Internet because you have to use cloud services or you have to spend more time on video calls, conferencing tools, and other things. We didn't know to what extent these things are going to impact each other. So the aim of this study was to go out there, have a great scientific sample size to make sure that our results are applicable to, you know, to a larger, population.
And what we did, we sent out a survey out. We asked people about these 4 different domains. For offices, we also receive some, emissions and, energy use data from the federal government to see how their offices are. And we put everything together to come up with that net impact of telework on emissions. The findings are that telework itself is a more sustainable option compared to the traditional office work.
And one of the biggest areas of savings in terms of emissions is transportation, as you said. Now we have that extent and for, Quebec and the national capital region, the numbers are really great. Now just to mention that the study was in these two regions, Quebec and national capital region. If your audience is not familiar with the National Capital Region, it's technically Ottawa and parts of Cateno, which creates the National Capital Regions. For transportation, we save energy, which is absolutely clear.
But when it comes to Quebec versus national capital regions, then we have homes, which in Quebec, they rely on electricity. And again, for your audience, if you're not familiar, electricity in Quebec is very clean. The emissions associated per kilowatt hour is very low. It's about 1.7 gram. Right?
Whereas in Ontario, we have high emissions associated with natural gas, and homes in Ontario use a lot of natural gas. So when it comes to homes, homes in the National Capital Region put more emissions out there. But the overall impact considering telework, the most savings happening in transportation and the increase in home energy use is not that much.
For our non Canadian listeners, I should point out that Ottawa, the nation's capital, is tucked right up against the, it's in Ontario, but tucked up against the Quebec border, And many of the federal government's office buildings are in Gatineau, Quebec. And so there's a lot of transportation back and forth. Quebec is is almost like a 100% hydro. It's a huge hydro producer. It exports a lot of, electricity to the United States and some to Ontario.
And Ontario also has a fair amount of of hydro, but also, is the biggest one of the biggest nuclear power generating, jurisdictions in the world. And, but a lot of its heating is is with gas as as far as I'm concerned. So a little context for you. So what you found as I understand it is that the emissions associated with, with remote work in a in the Ontario side was about 25%, but in the Quebec side was 64%, and that most and that all or most of it came from the difference between heating with electricity versus heating with gas.
Yep. That's absolutely correct. To give a little bit more context, when we are talking about the proportions of emissions associated with each domain, homes in Ontario or to be more specific, the National Capital Region have overall a higher amount of emissions put out there. Right? And that is regardless of telework.
When you start teleworking and you increase your occupancy hours at your home, the increase in those emissions, are happening. But when you're comparing the Quebec homes versus the Ontario homes, the increase is a little bit different because the electricity is so clean in Quebec, and it might, be very little. Whereas in National Capital Region, it's a little bit higher. But the thing is that the proportion associated with homes in National Capital Region is a lot. It's about 4 tons per year per employee.
Right? Whereas for Quebec, it's about just, 40. So the proportion there is so high that's why, that is happening.
I think most people probably, keep the adjust the temperature of their home like we do, which is essentially you walk out the door in the morning, and you don't touch the thermostat, and then you you know? So the home is essentially being, heated all during the day, whether you're there or not. And so the, if you're working from home, probably doesn't increase your, gas consumption or your electricity consumption that much. Whereas, if fewer people are commuting to work in an office tower, then, presumably, hybrid work would lead to less office space requirements by the federal government, and that might lead to lower emissions on the work side. Is that a reasonable assumption?
Those are reasonable assumptions, but sound like, changes to the home part that you mentioned because necessarily it's not you living the thermostat temperature at a certain degree. Especially if you have a smart thermostat or a programmable thermostat, you probably have already programmed those things, and they are changing during the day. Right? If you have if you don't have a smart or a programmable thermostat, then that's a different story. But there are probably program, and you can adjust them.
But aside from that, there's also other things associated with telework, which we can talk about it, that they are more on the behavioral part of it. But I'm not diving deep into that. But what you said about the offices is absolutely correct. Divestment plans are already in place. I cannot talk on behalf of the federal government because I am not associated with them.
That's a question for the federal government, but that's for sure true that there's some divestment plans in place. And actually in our study, we have divestment plans in the assumptions, based on what we receive from the federal government. And that is true. Right? And aside from that, the federal government has, for example, dedicated collaborative work spaces.
You can just search them online and you can find them online. So those collaborative spaces, for example, one of the things that can happen is we can maximize the occupancy in those spaces by having better coordination between teams. Right? And that is super important. This is a fun fact.
This is not related to the study, but, if you look up the recommended office space per employee and the office space per employee in Canada, our numbers here are a little bit higher. And that's just a fun fact that you can find it online. It's not related to the study, but that is something important. Right? In addition to that, when you have office buildings, they normally when they are building those buildings, they have a design occupancy level, which means the building is intended to operate with this particular occupancy schedules.
Right? And some of the latest research found that buildings really do not reach those design occupancy levels. So we are always having fewer people in the building, and that increases the emission of the building because you are not operating with the full capacity that the building is designed for. Something that these collaborative spaces can offer or something that with better coordination can happen is that teams can maximize that occupancy. Once you maximize that occupancy, it means that the entire office building is operating with its full capacity and reducing emissions per capita, and also being efficient for the organization.
It reduces the cabin footprint. It reduces the mission associated with the employees. It's also better for environment.
This there's a lot of chatter on my social media accounts with urban planners, you know, and the cities and, you know, like Ottawa have got a lot of congestion downtown, a lot of traffic, and a lot of idled idling traffic, which leads to, higher emissions. And so there's a lot of talk about redesigning urban spaces so that we're using more public transit. We're using, more active transportation, you know, like cycling or scooters or something like that. And does the fact does telework affect that at all? You know, does it reduce the amount of traffic in in, like, downtown, Ottawa?
Because one of the things that I see all the time from the urban planners is you build more roads and people just drive more, and they fill them up and you still wind up with the same amount of of congestion. So if you took more people off the road through telework, do the rest of the people just drive more and you have the same amount of congestion downtown?
But that is correct. You would need definitely to look at our transportation or either our preferences regarding transportation. Right? Even the simple choice of switching from an gas car or a gym based car to electric car is is a good option because you're using emissions. Although, there's a still embodied cabin, in there.
Right? But that is absolutely correct. What our report found out is that what telework does at the very least is that it shifts the peak hour of, transportation, on our highways. Right? And that is super important because you are not going to be facing as much traffic as you were facing before.
So that shift in peak hours is super helpful. That's number 1. But when they're talking about the planning in general and the the bigger scope of it, I need to go back to a few of our other studies, which is not included in the report, but was the basis to inform the report and designing the survey is that you're absolutely right. The planning is going through a lot of, changes. People are talking we're talking about 15 minutes city right after to right after the pandemic, and now we are talking about 45 minutes cities, which was like a new idea a new a new idea that just came up.
And why we need, like, 45 minutes city. So there's a lot of different Arab planning strategies that being used, but here's the thing. The report that we did, it was a point at time. So we went in, we asked the people, and we received the survey back. Right? And we started analyzing it. What is associated with telework is also a longer term impact, which is just beyond the telework itself. Your income impacts us, your family impacts us. Your friends might impact us. Right?
Now I put in a simple example. In Ottawa, for example, you have the downtown, which is like apartments, condos. You can go or lease a building there and leave there. Everything has probably been in walking distance. But a lot of people prefer to move to the outer space because they can have bigger homes.
They can have higher bigger privacy, or they want to have the family home there. Right? And what happens what we found out in some of our interviews, not as part of the current report, is that people have different preferences. Right? Some people it's it's very normal. Right? Some of us are really social people. We like to go out there. We like to hang out with friends. For some of us, we like to stay with our family, stay in our home, have our morning coffee, look out of the window.
Right? That is something personal. But what we found out is that if you decide to move out of the downtown, right, and you go to the outskirts, like, let's say, 45 minutes away from Ottawa, 30 minutes away from Ottawa. Right? And you are fine for the 1st year or you're fine for the 1st 2 years.
And after the 2nd year, you're like, oh, you know what? I'm actually missing my friends in downtown, so I'm going to commute every weekend there to just meet up with them. Right? Or, oh, I am missing this in downtown. I'm going to commute there so that I can have access to this.
Or for whatever reason, for your daily cameras or something changes, for example, you need daycare or something, and you don't have something within your vicinity. You have to go to another place to to get the daycare. All those things can impact you. So what happens is this. We are removing the commute part from highways because we let people to the work.
But because they're living in the outer skirts, their behavioral preferences might force them to to now travel to downtown, right, and have those daily trips. So what is happening, there is a short term impact and there's a long term impact. Our study was at the report that came out was focusing more on the short part. It was just a single point in the time we went in and asked people questions came out and what what it was showed is that the transportation can save a lot of energy. But the longer term impact is something for our future studies that we did not look into.
What happens after 3 years of telework? What happens after 5 years of telework? Do you decide to go to the outskirts and then try to have daily trips to downtown, or are you going to stay, like, in the outer skirt area because you have access to amenities that you need? Those are some of the complex things associated with telework when we talked about the longer term, aspects of it.
I can see where this comes in because many, bigger cities, have conversations about how to revitalize their downtown. And a lot of it is, well, let's provide parking, for example. You know, free parking in the evening so people will come down to bars and restaurants, and and they'll go to concerts and and, you know, entertainment amenities, hockey games, whatever whatever it is. But that all works against lowering greenhouse gas emissions because now they're on the road again traveling back and forth between downtown and their suburban home. Is this where and let's we won't address the issue of this this silly conspiracy theory that, you know, they're gonna be 15 minute cities, and you won't be able to travel outside them.
You'll be required to stay within your you know, that put that conspiracy theory to to rest. But the idea of a 15 minute city where everything you need, is within a 15 minute drive, makes a lot of sense to me. And is are we seeing a a trend towards that, as a as part of the drive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, I guess, improve lifestyle?
I would say it is, like, not necessarily the 15 main city, but we are seeing a trend in communities that are being Personally, I like that. I like to walk to everywhere if it's possible, if it's in a close distance. Right? Nobody wants to walk in minus 30 degrees to a grocery store that is 40 minutes away. Right?
Either or if you like, that's that's like a it's, again, it's about personal preferences. My personal preference is that I don't like to walk in minus 30. But what we see is absolutely a trend in developing communities that amenities is within access. Right? So talking about Ottawa, for example, we have this, community in the east end of the city that is being developed.
It's like multiple condos. Everything is within access, coffee shops, restaurants, grocery stores, and everything. On the other side, you see Vesper that a lot of, younger generation people are going there. A lot of people who are, for example, employees of the federal government or other sectors that they are young and young professionals, and they are very carrier oriented. They move to Vesper.
Everything is really walking distance. You have the grocery stores. You have, for example, yoga, the studios that you can have access to. So there's absolutely a trend that people prefer to have everything within their community. But it's not necessarily like there's an active or, like, let's do the 15 minute city.
It's more about the neighborhood and have providing amenities. And that is super important. The other thing about the transportation part is improving public transportation. Right? I remember, a few months ago when there was Blues Fest in Ottawa, the transportation, there were, like, designated areas where you could commute with bus around, and that would be super helpful.
Like, we need to see more of that in order to see less cars or fewer cars on our highways. Right? Because when you have better public transportation, you can technically remove the need to driving your own car. The very least that we can do is switching to EVs. Right?
That is the very least that can be done. The better option is going to active transportation, where you take the bus or you bike around or you walk around. And those things are, in my opinion, way better options than driving a car, but it all goes back to personal preferences.
Right. We, you know, traditionally, our family has, has driven, Of late, because now my wife and I were empty nesters, we are looking at more, biking. We have ebikes, and, and so I might go go get some groceries and and put them in my knapsack, whereas before I I would have driven and I might when I go out for coffee with someone, I I might, you know, ride there instead of and and so being reasonably close, is a is a very good thing. But that comes with, in our case, that comes with living in a smaller city. I think where Parksville is maybe 10, 12,000, so everything is reasonably close that that we need, but we've lived in Calgary, you know, so we that was but we lived in a in a community in southeast Calgary called Mackenzie Town that was planned as an urban village in the mid nineties.
And so a couple blocks from us was the high street, they called it. It was 2 or 3 blocks, and it had a a grocery store, sort of anchored the end of the street, and then it had all sorts of services and and things that you would you would need, and you could walk there. And it was we we absolutely loved it. And we also work from home, so we didn't have to commute. And so in in a way, we're kind of we were at that time kind of the, almost like a a model for what you might want to do, what you the goal that you might want to incorporate into a new urban planning where we we lived in an urban village, could walk, to everything we needed, and work from home.
Problem is we probably drove more, or still drove for going to restaurants, go to shopping malls, that sort of thing. So how do I and I'm not sure that they I have a a question for you out of this far as I am, is that it seems like there's unintended consequences. You set something up. You you plan a a community with a particular goal in mind, and humans being the, ornery, contrary types that they are, then go do something you hadn't expected and undermine the, the objectives of the of of the of the planners. And, I'm just wondering the extent to which that tendency, might dilute the effect of telework.
Well, let's just start with this. A key to date night driven in a car is no problem. You need that in your life to keep your life going as well. But for example, a better choice is switching to EVs, right, or having better access. When you're talking about community as you, of course, do not the shopping mall in every community.
Right? The key to success, in my opinion, is better public transportation. There is absolutely unintended consequences or even things that you really cannot control. Because in some sense, there might be like an older area or like a downtown area that restaurants are operating from, like, a 100 years ago, 80 years ago, and people like to go to those places. Right?
You cannot force people not to go to those places because you want to reduce emission. The key to success is to provide, let's say, 0 emission options or near zero emission options, and that's better public transportation. Right? You probably had the experience of, let's say, I don't know, undergraduate students hopping on buses, going to party places. Right?
You see the entire bus packed with the young people going to a party. Right? The same thing can happen when you're talking about communities. If, for example, you're going on a date, you can take the bus. Right?
You just need a better public transportation so that you don't have to wait, for example, 40 minutes in the cold for the bus to arrive. Right? Or you need better access. Or if you're living in a warmer climate, you need better access with biking lanes or more safe options. There's, like, a lot of a study going on how we can make the, the biking lanes safer options.
I won't get into those details, but those are the options. Those are the keys to success. If you have the experience of traveling to Europe, for example, in Netherlands, you see that everybody likes biking. Right? Even even sometimes people just get on bikes, go to restaurant together because everything is within accessible distance.
And also at the same time, there is a strong biking system in place. Right? Now I'm not getting into the climate details, how the climates between the two countries are different, like comparing Canada to Netherlands. But the idea, you you get you get the idea, better options to support people. Right? It can be bike lanes, can be active transportation, better bus systems, and all those options that are available to people.
So really, the the results from your study are best seen as part of a broader approach, a change to transportation and urban design and and how we live and and and, you know, live our lives. So telework can save emissions, and then that has to be integrated into some kind of a a broader strategy, within within, within cities. Well, Farzemp,
thank you very much.
This has been very useful and very interesting. And so, we'll look forward to our next interview.
Thank you so much, Mark.