Should Home working and hybrid working be included in a Carbon Reduction Plan?

Should Home working and hybrid working be included in a Carbon Reduction Plan?

“ You're a home worker if you permanently work from your home or split your working time between the workplace and home (sometimes called hybrid working).”

Health and Safety Executive

I think in the current climate this describes almost every person I know that works outside of the NHS/teaching. I have friends who work full time from home, and some who work hybrid, but I can only think of one or two who work full time in the office.

So, how is this accounted for in their businesses carbon calculations? Particularly when we’re looking at Carbon Reduction Plans for procurement frameworks.

Carbon Reduction Plans (CRP) are being used increasingly by the Government and NHS for their procurement frameworks. The CRP requires users to report their Scope One, Scope Two and 5 categories from the 15 Scope Three emissions as defined in the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol.

One of the scope three categories required for reporting is Category 7 - Employee Commuting. The GHG Protocol states in Category 7  “Companies may include emissions from teleworking (i.e., employees working remotely) in this category.”. It is the use of the word “may” that is causing the confusion. It is not a definite requirement, and the CRP guidance says “Optional: Emissions from employee teleworking” in their subsection about Employee Commuting.

So we have “may” and we have “optional” being used, but we can also see that we have been provided with the data in order to do the calculations.

Homeworking has been included in the government GHG conversion factors dataset since 2022. This is due to an increase of people reporting that they work from home, from 12% in 2019 to 39% in 2023, with a 49% peak in 2020 according to ONS data. So the data is available to do the emissions calculations.

My thinking is that the government is asking for reporting in Scope 3 Category 7, and they are also providing the data in order to include employee commuting, so I would include it. But the definitive clarity is also not there, so it is open to interpretation.

Some benefits to including it are that 

  • The emissions attributed to electricity production tend to decrease year on year (with 2023 being an anomaly), and this would likely happen to homeworking too so your business carbon emissions decrease by default.
  • If you track it you can change it. By counting it you are making the commitment to reduce it.
  • It may well become compulsory soon, and as such it’s better to start with it there rather than having to add it further down the line.