Quantitative holistic assessment of environmental impacts of teleworking

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In Canada, residential and commercial buildings and personal transportation are responsible for approximately 40% of energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Teleworking, telecommuting, and other alternative office working arrangements have been touted as having great potential to reduce personal transportation and office building energy use and space. However, it remains unclear how this impacts widespread societal energy use and GHG emissions particularly in the Canadian context considering residential and commercial buildings and passenger transportation. ***The long-term objective of the applicants' research program is to develop technologies, design processes, and operating strategies to yield high-performance (comfortable, usable, low-energy, resilient) buildings that have positive environmental, economic, and social impacts. The short-term objective (the current proposal) is to develop and apply scientific methods (modelling and simulation and field studies) to quantify the impact of alternative office working strategies on energy use and GHG emissions. The spatial scope will focus on office and residential buildings, but also consider passenger transportation and information and communication technologies (ICT). ***The proposed research involves a year-long large comprehensive mixed-methods field study of 100 office workers half who regularly telework and half who work in a conventional sense (commuting to an office outside of their home). The objectives are to: 1) develop concrete new knowledge on the energy and GHG emission impacts of working arrangements and 2) determine the extent to which various activities and purchasing decisions should be considered in a meta-model (the next step).***A comprehensive meta-model that considers the above four domains shall be developed and applied. The model aims at quantifying the marginal impact of individuals as well as larger trends spanning populations. The main data sources for this research are: 1) residential and commercial building models with detailed occupant models implemented and 2) publicly available databases (e.g., the Census).***The above research will be led by the applicant and executed by nine highly qualified personnel, including three PhD, four master's, and two undergraduate students. Trainees will gain significant experience with survey and field measurement methods, detailed building model, and fundamentals in energy, heat transfer, building controls, etc. all of which are highly sought after by industry and government. ***The results will have the potential to greatly impact corporate and government policy for the estimated 10-million workers in Canada who could telecommute. The research is expected to show that environmental impacts of alternative office working arrangements should not be limited to the building level and that employers may have the potential to significantly impact environmental impact well beyond the boundaries of the office building itself.