Mainers drive more than 15 billion miles a year, and transportation is the state’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. But working remotely can reduce those numbers. And state employees are offering a test case of how much of an impact remote work can have.
All Things Considered host Robbie Feinberg spoke with climate reporter Murray Carpenter, who looked into this for our series Climate Driven from Kennebec County, where many state employees are commuting less often to offices in Augusta.
This story is part of our series "Climate Driven: A deep dive into Maine's response, one county at a time."
Robbie Feinberg: So, Murray, we know that Mainers drive a lot - it's difficult to imagine getting almost anywhere without a car. Have we always driven this much?
Murray Carpenter: Well, the trend has been increasing over the decades. By 2019, Mainers were driving about 30% more miles than 30 years earlier, even though the population had grown less than 10% in that time.
2019 was also the year that former legislator Seth Berry sponsored a bill to encourage the state to set a goal of having 30% of state employees teleworking by 2030, in order to reduce carbon emissions from commuting. That seemed ambitious at the time. But then everything changed in 2020.
Right, that's when the pandemic first hit.
Yes. When everyone hunkered down at home, driving miles plummeted to numbers not seen since 1997. Berry told me that the pandemic had a big, unanticipated impact on remote working.
Seth Berry: “Everyone was forced to telework that could, and it really accelerated that transition. We did in fact reach that goal already, we’re at 32% of employees engaged in at least a day of telework, which is the goal that I’d hope for by 2030.”
And we know that 32% number because the bill that Berry sponsored ended up being a resolve directing the state to study the costs and benefits of telework for its employees. They discovered some really compelling information on just how much telework could benefit the climate.
What did they find?
So first, they found that the average state employee commutes 44 miles round trip each day. And that by working remotely, they estimate that state employees are burning a million fewer gallons of gas every year, and avoiding 8,000 tons of CO2 emissions. And they are driving 22 million fewer miles annually, a number that equals 46 round-trips to the moon.
Wow — that's a pretty significant impact. How much are state agencies actually embracing this shift so far?
To varying degrees, they are. The Department of Environmental Protection is being proactive here, and designing some offices with remote workers in mind. DEP is outfitting offices with what it calls hoteling work spaces, for employees who are only in the office intermittently. And it is equipping conference rooms with AV equipment to support virtual meetings. And spokesman David Madore told me DEP is interested in the climate benefits of remote work–they’ve calculated that the average employee releases 32 pounds of CO2 daily as a result of single passenger commuting.
But Alec Maybarduk, of the Maine Service Employees Association, a union that represents 9,000 state employees, would like to see the state do more to support remote work. He says the work state employees performed during the peak of the pandemic shows how effective they can be while working remotely. And he pointed out that we’ve gone backwards a bit since then.
How have we gone backwards?
At the peak of the pandemic, estimates showed that state employees were commuting a million fewer miles a week by working remotely. But now, the state says that employees are only commuting about 420,000 fewer miles a week - so the reduction in driving is only about half of what it was in 2020.
And it’s not just state employees that are returning to old driving habits. As we’ve resumed our normal routines, statewide driving numbers are ticking back up. Economists will tell you that’s a good thing, but climatologists might disagree.
And DOT projections are for driving miles to increase steadily in coming years. This conflicts directly with goals in the state climate plan of reducing driving miles 10% by 2025, and 20% by 2030.
I also spoke with Josh Caldwell, of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, and he noted that remote working is predicated on improving high-speed internet access all across the state. He said remote work is just one piece of the transportation puzzle.
Josh Caldwell: “Remote options are one of many forms of diversification that we need to take when it comes to our transportation system. That can take the form of more robust public transit and on-demand services, better walking and biking infrastructure, and of course more electric cars, trucks and bikes.”
So there are a lot of factors in this climate and remote work equation. Murray, you've clearly taken a deep dive into this — what's your overall takeaway of what this push by state government could mean for Maine going forward?
Well, state employees give us one glimpse of the climate benefits of remote work, and this dashboard quantifies that. And it’s important to understand this, as more Mainers are routinely working remotely. But there are many jobs that just can’t be done remotely, so this is just one just one arrow in the transportation quiver. And reducing the climate impacts of driving will be a constant and growing challenge.
