It would have to be a society wide calculation, and I doubt the vast, vast majority of people are going from zero driving to more driving like a NYC to suburbs migrant. More likely is people going from regularly driving 60min+ per day to sit at a desk no longer doing that drive, which is a net reduction in energy usage.

https://newsroom.aaa.com/2019/02/think-youre-in-your-car-mor...

> I doubt the vast, vast majority of people are going from zero driving to more driving like a NYC > to suburbs migrant

Going off property prices, it’s not negligible. (And going off labour prices, RW is clearly anti-agglomerational [1].)

[1] https://econ.vt.edu/content/dam/econ_vt_edu/seminars/fall-20...

Hard to say how the numbers ultimately work out. I guess we'll have to see what the net numbers look like for large cities in a few years. Anecdotally I do see a fair number of people I know who were living in cities, in part because it was convenient to their office, who moved out--including to rural locations--once they didn't need to regularly go into an office any longer.

I think the telling metric would be be the hybrid vs full time remote composition.

Even if full time rm is carbon negative, hybrid can be positive. Myself and many I know went from 10 min Daily commutes to 60+ min commutes 2-3 times a week.