Okay, on a personal level this can be tricky to calculate and it is highly individualistic.

Example for Heating

A German price comparison site has done the calculation and for their model – 20m² home office and a yearly usage of ~2000 litres heating oil for the whole apartment) – you would end up with ~4% higher usage [0]. That means that you have 80 litres more heating oil which is equivalent to roughly 80 days of commuting 20 km / day via car. The German average commuter does ~32 km / day [1].

[0]: https://www.verivox.de/presse/modellrechnung-homeoffice-erho...

[1]: https://www.postbank.de/themenwelten/beruf-vorsorge/artikel_...

Interesting info -- but I was mostly referring to the gas / oil consumed to heat up the office for 100 people vs. heat up 100 individual residences.

The savings from turning household heat down during the day aren't trivial, but they aren't very large either. You can keep your heat ~10-20°F lower during the day when you're not home and save energy, but then additional energy is needed later in the day to get the temperature back up. Typical estimates are that this lowers gas or oil consumption by 10-15%, and only in the colder months. Certainly dwarfed by energy spent commuting, on average.

Your comment on the second+ order effects is much more interesting, but also much more uncertain.

Good info, thanks

That to me feels like a very "US-centric" argument, although I'd still say it's a valid point. Over the pond here in the UK we're seeing an emergence more and more of Commuter-Town suburbia too, and personally I find it a worrying trend- new-build housing estates will cram a bunch of large, thin-walled, cheaply-insulated houses into a small area. Public transport links will be lacklustre. Large shops like supermarkets will probably be a walk away, but the design of the streets and roads will persuade many people that it's easier to drive 5 minutes instead.

I don't think the solution to that is "commute to the office where it's more efficient to heat all of us", though.

It's a long-term city-planning/suburb-planning, environmental architecture problem.

What about buildings semi-recessed into the ground (bedrooms in basement, use the surrounding ground for heat storage, sky-lights to allow sunlight in)? What about further adoption of solar panels for water heating and supplemental electricity? What about "keeping the door shut so the heat doesn't escape"...? What about neighbourhoods using communal heat pumps?

Then there's the fact that a helluva lot of us can't even afford these houses you mention because the housing market is in crisis so we continue to stay in our smaller city flats despite our ability to work remotely.

Like, there's a helluva lot more white collar office workers out there in Western civilisation who _aren't_ following that "get enough money, get a car, have 2.5 kids, move out to the 'burbs" life - don't forget about us.

At least where I live you can't turn heating off. Pipes freeze. Appliances get damaged. We keep it about 62F during the day in the winter whether we are home or not.

We only get groceries twice a month. I only drive a 2-3k miles a year which is far below average in the U.S. and I owe it all to the lack of commute. Most of those miles are due to the fact that we own a cabin in another state which we visit in the summer as well and has nothing to do with the day to day.

Maybe if you can get to the office via public transport or cycling it might make sense. But, if you drive then it's consuming more energy than heating the room you're in at home.

This is just me, but I don’t ever turn the heater on in the winter.

I also live in Seattle where a majority of the homes weren’t built with AC. Offices will run the AC units all summer long too.

I assume you are in an apartment complex and not a free standing home? That is, you are a vampire, stealing your neighbor's heat. Otherwise, I do not see how that is possible.