Those are really bizarre levels of trying to be counterintuitive. For lunch you can now walk to your refrigerator to get a sandwich. It burns much less carbon to just walk or drive to your nearest watering hole for a beer rather than driving to work in rush hour and then back in order to get a beer. Total transportation carbon emissions from the average household are also twice the total HVAC emissions, and carbon consumption due to appliances like refrigerators, washer/driers and hot water heaters should be relatively constant (could even go down if you just wear the same pair of sweatpants for a week).

Completely :)

I was just trying to point out that just the fact of stopping people commuting doesn't really mean a lot, there are a lot more things in play.

I'm in the UK, and our houses are not really built for extreme temperature fluctuations, so in the summer I run the portable AC - which is terrible but otherwise we can't sleep. In the winter, it's crazy cold - but at least now we have the log burner in so not as bad.

I think it does depend on where you are in the world, I can't walk to a pub, or a shop where I live. I have to drive further than my office to get to a supermarket or town.

But yes, I may have not made great points in that post!

If people own a house anyway, working in it during the day doesn't really add much in the energy use. Maybe there's a few degrees more heating or cooling at the margins. Maybe there are more trips to a store--on the other hand, restaurants and cafeterias aren't necessarily super-efficient.

Perhaps, but anecdotally my electricity and gas bills have been much higher since I've been working at home - YMMV of course

I'm sure it varies by the house/apartment.

I don't really see a difference in electricity unless I'm traveling for an extended period but I have very limited AC which I don't use much. As for heat, the difference associated with dropping the temperature maybe 10 degrees F for 8 hours a day doesn't add up to a lot.

The question is the relative amount of electrify and gas used at home vs the office plus commute. Running the same computer at home or the office clearly is irrelevant for the environment.

Is it though? Maybe my office uses an electricity supplier who charges a bit more, but uses as much renewable as possible, but at home my supplier doesn’t use any renewable, but is cheaper

There are just too many factors involved to make a fair comparison - especially across countries

There is no such thing as a “green” electricity supplier in practice. It’s the same power plants connected to the same grid. Unused solar power isn’t going to be wasted in favor of gas turbines.

Home temperature is fairly consistent over the day. Not having an office to heat or cool more than compensates for the difference.

Commuting costs completely dominate in terms of energy costs. As to getting delivery for lunch, that’s well outside of most peoples price range. The vast majority of people are going to simply buy more food on their normal shopping trips.

The running the same computer hardware at home or the office is meaningless for the environment, but you will notice the difference in your personal electric bill.

Radio’s use minimal electricity ~25w depending on volume, which is why you can find hand crank models etc.

I think both of you are making a lot of assumptions without providing any sources to back up your own anecdotal experiences. Also related, but HN could really use an optional country-flag next to each user's name so that we could at least see what country people are referring to respective their experiences which they state as "the way it is".

> Home temperature is fairly consistent over the day.

You must live in a mild climate where the outside temperature doesn't change much because everywhere I've lived in the world, you constantly turn on/off heating/fans/air-conditioning depending on the season and time of day.

> Commuting costs completely dominate in terms of energy costs.

Assuming usage of cars. Leave the US and generally public transportation is a thing used by most people. The trains/trams/buses still travel the same routes and times as before-pandemic times.

> The running the same computer hardware at home or the office

Why is that? My PCs at work each use ~150W and I never turn them off because Wake-On-Lan doesn't always work. I presume it's the same for most of my 700 co-workers who also WFH. That's a lot of KW and not to be scoffed at.

> Radio’s use minimal electricity ~25w

You are taking the minimal example of radio. I would guess that more than a negligible amount of people have something more substantial at home which uses more than 25w (including amp/speakers/wifi to connect to Alexa, etc), granted it's probably still not much and could even balance out with people who don't listen to radio while working? Who knows, IMO it's futile to even try to calculate this value globally.

> Assuming usage of cars. Leave the US and generally public transportation is a thing used by most people. The trains/trams/buses still travel the same routes and times as before-pandemic times.

Across the US and presumably the world mass transit reduced service in response to reduced ridership. If WFH becomes more common that will definitely cover more areas as schedules very much are based on demand. Ex: https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/03/24/coronavirus-mta-subw...

> IMO it's futile to even try to calculate this value globally.

Electricity is directly measured at the grid level and 2020 saw a clear reduction, how much of that relates to WFH is more questionable.

And then people stop using it as much and, in many cases, drive instead because transit becomes less attractive.

Most people I know avoid using cramped rush hour transit when they can. So overall more steady state operation is likely to make public transit more appealing. Even if they cut back from a train every 8 minutes to one every 15 during rush hour.

Isn't it more productive to have a kitchen staff produce food for 1000s of people vs. every person ordering delivery, cooking for themselves, etc.?

Surely cooling/heating 1000 separate homes would cost more than an office space optimized for it, right?

> Isn't it more productive to have a kitchen staff produce food for 1000s of people vs. every person ordering delivery, cooking for themselves, etc.?

Depends on the comparison, someone microwaving lunch at home or the office is basically identical. Restaurants can be more efficient than cooking at home, but for example the open air style refrigerators used in some restaurants have terrible energy efficiency. https://www.kitchenall.com/open-air-merchandisers.html?p=2 At the extreme end when talking out door heating for guest comfort etc restaurants can be shockingly bad because it’s generally the least important aspect of the business.

> Surely cooling/heating 1000 separate homes would cost more than an office optimized for it.

Depends, the comparison might be to not having an office and therefore not needing to heat or cool it at all. There is some opportunity to let empty homes get closer to ambient temperature and therefore reduce heat gain or loss, but it’s not clear cut. We can say that total electricity demand dropped in the pandemic which suggests WFH is likely more energy efficient even with empty office space.

So, sure in some cases it’s better and in some cases worse, but that really doesn’t cover the commute costs.