Out of Control

[T]he question of whether walking (or bicycling) is better or worse than driving has been discussed for more than two decades. The “drive vs. walk” question goes something like this: you’re at home and need to go to a store three-quarters of a mile away (1.5 miles roundtrip). Concerned about your potential contribution to climate change and conscious that the production and transportation of the calories you’ll burn in walking or bicycling can be very carbon-intensive, you wonder if driving to the store would release fewer greenhouse gases.

In his book, How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, Chris Goodall answers the question this way: “It makes more sense to drive than walk, if walking means you need to eat more to replace the energy lost.” [...]

The media have already repeated Goodall’s claims, with limited or no critical analysis. The Times (U.K.) stated: “Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.”

The Pacific Institute has just released their calculations for the walk vs. drive question, and the winner in terms of greenhouse gas emissions is: it depends. (That conclusion shouldn't surprise anyone who is familiar with comparative life-cycle analyses.)

According to the Pacific Institute, Goodall's calculations compared the greenhouse gas emissions associated with one of the most energy-intensive foods (top sirloin beef produced in Japan) with greenhouse gas emissions from a gasoline-fueled car that gets ~30.3 mpg.

In a more nuanced analysis, you could think of this more like a typical energy efficiency calculation, with the overall greenhouse gas emissions by mode a factor of both the carbon-intensity of the fuel/food and the fuel economy of the machine/person. We know that most humans (at least those who have not specialized in walking to the store and back) are not all that fuel-efficient themselves--we're constantly burning calories to run non-essential functions, like cognitive processes that allow us to invent cars and drive them. We also already know that fueling cars with corn ethanol is a losing proposition, so it's not shocking that feeding corn* to beef to fuel people to walk is no silver greenhouse gas bullet, either.

What about feeding a more average diet to an average person to walk, bike (said to be the "most efficient machine on Earth"), or drive an average car under average conditions? Pacific Institute calculates that "a typical person walking 1.5 miles in the U.S. would generate less than 25% of the GHG that would be generated if that person drove the same distance." Their calculation includes interesting assumptions such as beginning the automobile trip with a cold engine and the extra caloric demands on drivers having to navigate through congested traffic. The details are important, and in this case a good read. Unfortunately Pacific Institute doesn't appear to have run the specific calculations for pedicabs, which John Tierney requested on his blog earlier this year, but they do look at milk and other food sources.

The assumptions are also revealing. Goodall makes no secret of his agenda, which is to draw attention to the carbon-intensity of meat and dairy production. Livestock are thought to be comparable to transportation in greenhouse gas emissions at a global level. Car-lovers, car-haters, vegetarians, beef-eaters, environmental do-gooders, evil-dooers, and cynics will each have their own spin on these calculations. Mine is (still) that this is just yet another justification for making sure individuals are free to make their own decisions on how to personally economize on energy- and carbon-intensive activities--and possibly that my more physically-fit friends should run errands to the store for me in the future.

(*In the Japanese beef example, the animals were fed a mix of corn, wheat, soy and alfalfa.)

Hand ringing over the supply of oil has prompted more than one politician, planner and pundit to push for "alternative" energy sources. Most of this politicization of the energy industry is driven by concerns over so-called "peak oil". Peak oil is the theory that we have already tapped into the world's supply of oil to the point we can not sustain current or future consumption levels. So, oil will become less and less scarce, forcing rising energy prices and, for some, the collapse of oil-based economies (e.g., the industrialized world).

A new report from Cambridge Energy Research Associates shows why "peak oil" is largely irrelevant.

As reported in the newpapers The Australian Business in an article published 19 January 2008:

A landmark study of more than 800 oilfields by Cambridge Energy Research Associates has concluded that rates of decline are only 4.5 per cent a year, almost half the rate previously believed, leading the consultancy to conclude that oil output will continue to rise over the next decade.

A more interesting point was made by Peter Davies, BP's chief economist:

The optimistic view of the world's oil resource was also given support by BP's chief economist, Peter Davies, who dismissed theories of "Peak Oil" as fallacious. Instead, he gave warning that world oil production would peak as demand weakened, because of political constraints, including taxation and government efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Thanks again to our friends at the National Center for Policy Analysis for bringing this new study to our attention through their Daily Plicy Digest.

A working paper out from two economists at Colorado College looks at what happens to patents for new inentions to make cars more fuel efficient when the price of gasoline change. They find that a a 12 cent rise in domestic gasoline prices leads to a 9% increase in energy-saving patents immediately, and many times that amount over a longer period. Higher gas prices don't explain all the new patents, but the connection is large and very strong.

It makes simple economic sense that over time rising gas prices will be what really drives the switch to more fuel efficient technologies and eventually the move away from oil. And this force makes most government policies designed to speed up change marginal at best, ludicrous most often--like the new wave of ethanol polices.

Talking to a reporter about ethanol today reminded me how many classic elements of bad policy are wrapped up in the ethanol issue.

Ethanol started as a bust. Originally pushed as an additive to gasoline to help reduce emissions, it did not work. From a 2003 Reason study on ethanol:

The Environmental Protection Agency formed a Blue Ribbon Panel in 1999 to study the health benefits of fuel oxygenates. The Blue Ribbon Panel report highlighted the fact that the air quality benefits of oxygenated fuel are unclear. The Blue Ribbon Panel recommendation was to eliminate the oxygenate requirement altogether.

In other words, the EPA repudiated ethanol as a clean air additive (see the whole deal here). New research from Marc Jacobsen at Stanford confirms the EPA's conclusion:

Due to its ozone effects, future E85 may be a greater overall public health risk than gasoline. However, because of the uncertainty in future emission regulations, it can be concluded with confidence only that E85 is unlikely to improve air quality over future gasoline vehicles. Unburned ethanol emissions fromE85may result in a global-scale source of acetaldehyde larger than that of direct emissions.

But advocates and corn state Congressmen quickly shifted to "Ethanol will reduce our use of oil, especially that evil mid eastern oil. yeah, yeah, thats the ticket."

But there is plenty of reason to believe that ethanol will do litle to reduce oil use--beacuse with ehtanol you have to use more gasoline to go a mile in your car, plus it takes lots of fuel to produce the crops and turn them into ethanol and get the ethanol into your tank. That same Reason study did a benefit-cost analysis of the ethanol mandate and showed the total energy balance from using ethanol is probably at best a tiny bit positive. Even Consumer Reports magazine did a nice accessible article "The ethanol myth."

A long string of government policies on alternative fuel vehicles have not worked. Ethanol was one of them. But like a zombie from Shaun of the Dead it is back and making me laugh in a sickened way. We'll have alternative fuel vehicles someday, when the market gets us there. And they have a tough row to hoe to beat out hybrids, which are doing quite well.

Rich Lowry on the inevitability of auto travel:

Americans have arrived at an answer to high gas prices and concerns about global warming — buy more cars. According to a report in The New York Times, households with a small, gas-efficient car own, on average, almost three cars.

They are just adding the small car to their driveway fleet. The Times reports that last year more than 500,000 small models were purchased as a second or third car. Which couldn't have been what small-car evangelists had in mind when urging people into more efficient vehicles. Ever since Henry Ford alighted on his vision of mass-produced cars affordable to the average consumer, there is no question to which Americans haven't found the answer to be more cars and more driving.

...
The White House and top Democrats are proposing to increase mandatory fuel-economy standards for cars as a way to lessen our dependence on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse emissions. By increasing the efficiency of cars, however, they only will encourage more driving. In the Cato Institute publication Regulation, Andrew Kleit writes, "The latest estimates are that for every 10 percent increase in fuel efficiency, people increase their driving by two percent."

Shameless plug of a plug:

In their book "The Road More Traveled," Ted Balaker and Sam Staley argue that car ownership and driving track with wealth — the richer a country is, the more it will drive.

Whole piece here.

Related: Perhaps the "problem" is wealth

It looks like an all-out ban on incandescent light bulbs is off the table in California for the time being. AB 722, which would have banned sale of traditional light bulbs in the state by 2012, has been amended to require, instead, that the bulbs achieve a 50 lumens per watt efficiency (equivalent to the lower range of compact florescent bulbs) beginning in 2010 for 100-watt bulbs, phasing in through 2016 for 40-watt bulbs. Though not perfect, it is a substantially more elegant policy than the earlier proposal. According to the Assembly analysis of the proposed bill, "almost 2 percent" of the state's entire electricity consumption goes to power incandescent lights.

GE, don't fail me now!

Earlier posts on the topic here and here and here.

Also, for our general edification, a photo of AB 722 author, Assemblymember Lloyd Levine, proving (??) that the quality of light produced by florescent bulbs is nothing to be afraid of.

So many people have proposed so many ways of dealing with global warming (btw, Sheryl Crow now says her toilet paper plan was a joke). Our Bob Poole just tossed a little perspective into the debate.

From his most recent Surface Transportation Innovations newsletter (which will be archived here soon):

Whatever you may think about the extent to which human activity is generating greenhouse gases that are warming the earth, the political reality is that curbs on carbon emissions are coming. The question before us in transportation is how to deal with this challenge in the most cost-effective ways.

One of the worst things we could do is to single out transportation as the villain of the piece, focusing controls disproportionately on this sector that is so vital to economic activity. That’s the perspective of ridiculous books like last year’s Lives per Gallon, which attributes most of the world’s evils to the use of petroleum products as transportation fuel. Petroleum fuels are still critically important, since we don’t yet have anything with the same energy density, a crucial component for a vehicle that must carry its energy source around with it (especially aircraft, where weight-minimization is essential). Petroleum accounts for 42% of total US energy usage, and two-thirds of that is used for transportation. Thus, we use 28% of our energy on transportation.

Electricity is one of the other major uses of energy, with the largest sources being coal and natural gas, not oil. So any sensible policy for reducing carbon emissions has to look carefully at all energy use, not just transportation. Coal is by far the largest source of carbon emissions, and there are ready substitutes for coal as power plant fuel. An article on coal mining, in the Wall Street Journal this week, noted the worldwide problem of uncontrolled fires in coal mines. According to the article, “ . . . more than 100 million tons of coal are consumed by fires annually in China, contributing as much to worldwide carbon dioxide emissions as all the cars and light trucks in the U.S.” If that number is valid, it may well be more cost-effective to go after that problem (sheer waste) before taking draconian measures to curtail vehicle fuel use.

Providing the latest evidence that state legislators often have too much time—and tax revenue—on their hands, this story describes Iowa lawmakers’ intention to make the “Hawkeye State” ‘energy independent’ by 2025.

Already approved by a House Committee, the legislation would create a Director of Energy Independence, an advisory council of experts who would set goals and issue fuel mandates and create an Iowa Power Fund to spend $100 million taxpayer dollars ‘investing’ in renewable energy research. (Apparently the private sector missed the memo that their might be a market in renewable energy.)

State Senator Rob Hogg offered this astute observation in support of the proposal:

"We are hemorrhaging billions of dollars ... to out of state and out of country fossil fuel producers," Hogg said. "We need to reverse that trend."

No word on whether Sen. Hogg feels empathy for those out of state consumers who are hemorrhaging billions on Iowa corn products. Perhaps once the state is weaned off foreign oil, this Prairie Pericles can next promote Iowa textile mills to make the state independent of foreign t-shirts or find a way to reverse its dependence on foreign built TVs.

Of course, this flight of fancy might be funny if it weren’t tax dollars from the paychecks of actual Iowans funding this nonsense.

A couple years ago, the Iowa Legislature created the Grow Iowa Values Fund, to provide venture capital for the state’s economy. A recent state auditor report found that the program had widely missed most of its goals.

No doubt the lofty goals of ‘energy independence’ will meet the same end. Too bad taxpayers’ wallets will be $100 million lighter.

Two quick excerpts from today's news--

The Contra Costa Times reports:

The United States isn't likely to save electricity from the extended daylight-saving time that starts Sunday, contrary to Congress' reasons for ordering the change, two UC Berkeley economists concluded in a study released Thursday.

The study in question is here. Reason's David Nott wrote about the dim daylight-saving idea last year: Putting the Cuckoo in our Clocks.

And from the Fresno Bee:

The Valley air district today will release an updated smog cleanup plan that calls for scrapping 30,000 polluting passenger cars....The district proposes to identify the worst polluters through state smog-testing records. Owners would be approached and offered $5,000 apiece to sell their cars. The district will destroy the vehicles it purchases. If all 30,000 are taken off the road, two tons of pollution would be eliminated each day.

Reason's Joel Schwartz made the case for focusing California's Smog Check program on voluntary scrap of gross polluters here.

As the deadline for bills to be introduced in the California legislature came and went last week, many noted a promising frontrunner for the wackiest bill of the year: the How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb Act (AB722). The bill, which would ban the sale of incandescent light bulbs in the state beginning in 2012, was brought to us by Assemblymember Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys), who last year sponsored the legislative crackdown on plastic grocery bags.

This legislation and similar “if you can’t beat them, ban them” proposals announced recently in New Jersey, Ontario and Australia are intended to boost sales of compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs).

WorldatWork:

A growing number of American workers are reporting that their employers allows them to work remotely at least one day per month, according to a recent survey by WorldatWork.

The survey found that 12.4 million workers reported that their employer allowed them to work remotely at least one day per month in 2006, up from 9.9 million in 2005 and 7.6 million in 2004. WorldatWork estimates that about 8 percent of American workers have an employer that allows them to telecommute at least one day per month.

The organization says the increase is likely the result of a combination of factors, including the proliferation of high speed/broadband and other wireless access (which has made it both less expensive and more productive to work remotely) and the willingness of more employers to embrace flexibility.

More here.

Related: Telecommuting no big deal anymore

Related: Wait’ll all those MySpacers become managers

Network World’s Bob Brown interviews Tom Mulhall, co-owner of The Terra Cotta Inn, a clothing optional resort and spa in Palm Springs, CA.

Any advice to those looking to give naked telework a whirl?

Get a laptop with good screen resolution. Since Palm Springs is very sunny, we have seen guests with a towel over there head and laptop to cut down glare. Otherwise you will be forced to work in the shade. Also don't use a laptop at the edge of the pool while you are in the water. Laptops, a few cocktails and pool water do not mix as we have seen a few times.

Do you know of people who have sought out telecommuting jobs to satisfy their desire to work naked?

Yes, we have some guests mainly in the high-tech field that purposely freelance so that they can live nude at home. They just dislike wearing clothes, and freelancing out of their homes is the best thing that has ever happened to them. I would say, however, that most of our guests do not consider themselves nudists. They are regular people who just enjoy nude sunbathing on their vacations.

Related: How many of them are there?

Back in the clothed world of telecommuting, the online classroom is becoming mainstream:

[There are] 1 million kindergarten through high school student enrollments in virtual schooling across the nation, according to the North American Council for Online Learning, a nonprofit organization for administrators, teachers and others involved in online schooling.

Enrollment, counted as the total number of seats in all online classes, not the number of students, has grown more than 20 times in seven years, and the group expects the numbers to continue to jump 30% annually.

Article here.

Related: Telecollege gets a boost

A commentary from UtiliPoint, taking a realistc look at the investment , timeline, and portfolio needs to really dramaticaly change where we get energy from, linking it nicely to the emerging focus of global capital on this problem. Private investment will lead the way.

Why We Can't Grow Our Way Out of Energy Dependence
By Peter C. Fusaro
Chairman, Global Change Associates

What I now see happening is that the true energy professionals are coming into the space, mostly as private equity funds for clean tech and clean energy alternative. These are established teams that have built energy projects all over this country and the world. The know-how is coming into place. Big energy will be the exit strategies and buy these new technology upstarts. We have entered the bottom of the first inning. This is a long game. It is survival of the energy fittest, and we need to start now!

It would be hard to add anything to the flurry of criticisms President Bush is receiving for his unrealistic renewable and alternative fuels mandate launched in last night’s State of the Union address—even the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope is calling Twenty in Ten “magic wand stuff.”

It can be tough to sort out all the pros and cons of owning a hybrid car. There’s the gas mileage advantage, but that’s often overstated.

Even though the savings may not be as grand as advertised, you'll still save money at the pump. But since you pay more at the dealership you’ll have factor in your driving habits and do a bit of number-crunching to figure out if your four-wheeled eco-statement will save you dough in the long-run. And there are plenty of other factors to consider. For example, what about maintenance costs and resale value?

A new study looks at the whole hybrid:

A study released today by auto industry analysts at IntelliChoice shows that all of the 22 hybrid models currently sold in the U.S. will save owners money thanks to lower total cost of ownership, compared with competing vehicles.

That news is significant vindication for manufacturers and consumers of hybrid gas-electrics that have often endured questions from critics and consumers alike about the long-term economy of the technology-packed cars.
…

The IntelliChoice survey focused on seven criteria, including depreciation, fuel costs, finance costs, insurance, repairs, maintenance, and applicable state fees. After the Prius, the group found the Honda Civic Hybrid, the Toyota Highlander 2WD, and the Lexus RX 400h (2WD and AWD) were the most cost-efficient over a five-year or 70,000-mile period. Those models are all made by the two leading hybrid manufacturers, Honda and Toyota.

Business Week article here.

Slide show of hybrid rankings here.

Related: What politicians drive

When gas prices rise, we get wails from the public and endless investigations into whether “Big Oil” might be screwing consumers.

But what happens when Big Milk flexes its political muscle to keep prices artificially high?

I see stuff like this as more evidence that managers should rethink their in-the-desk-from-9-to-5 mentality:

Psychology researchers performed a study with 16 subjects, each restricted to 5 hours of sleep at night. The subjects were split into 4 groups — no nap, 30-s nap, 90-s nap, and 10-min nap. Subjects that took naps for 90 seconds or less were not found to perform any better on alertness and cognitive tasks. However, subjects that took a 10 minute nap significantly improve performance in multiple post-nap tests. This seems to suggest that only stage 2 sleep helps you recuperate from lack of nocturnal sleep.

Study here; via Tasty Research.

I think one of the reasons telecommuters often work longer and more productively than office workers is because they’re better able to fit in recuperative activities. Even just creating a more comfortable environment—working outdoors from a reclining chair as I recall one design engineer doing, going tie-less (or even less)—helps workers’ brains stay fresh.

Related: Telecommuters Prove More Productive (with comments from yours truly)

There are probably quite a few enviros and transit-backers who wish we’d stop asking people to drive less, stop talking about tinkering with the gas tax, and just yank keys away from drivers.

Mexico City tried that, sort of. In 1989 officials introduced a program that bans all vehicles from driving one workday per week based on the last digit of the vehicle's license plate.

Certainly that kind of “get tough” policy would cut emissions and boost transit ridership … Or maybe not.

Matthew Kahn points to a study by University of Michigan’s Lucas W. Davis: The Effect of Driving Restrictions on Air Quality in Mexico City.

From the abstract:

Across pollutants and specifications there is no evidence that the program has improved air quality. The policy has caused a relative increase in air pollution during weekends and hours of the day when the restrictions are not in place, but there is no evidence of an absolute improvement in air quality during any hour of the day or any day of the week. Furthermore, while it was hoped that the program would cause drivers to substitute to low-emissions forms of transportation, there is no evidence of increased ridership of the Mexico City subway or public bus system. Instead, evidence from the market for used taxis suggests that the program induced substitution to taxis.

More here.

Related: More unintended consequences here

Another sign that telecommuting is moving from emerging innovation to commonplace practice:

Most companies now offer workers the option to work from home, satellite offices and other locations, according to a survey conducted by Philadelphia-based Yoh Services, a provider of talent and outsourcing services. The survey also found that most Human Resources (HR) managers expect the use of telecommuting to increase over the next two years.

"We learned that companies need to build a product that says, 'if you come and work for us here's what you're going to have: a casual work environment, a flexible schedule' -- whatever that may be," said Jim Lanzalotto, vice president of strategy and marketing for Yoh. "Companies are realizing that in order to attract the best people to come work for their companies they need to create an environment that's conducive to do that."

Yoh surveyed 198 HR managers at the Society for Human Resource Management 2006 Conference and Exposition in June about their company's telecommuting policies. The results of the survey were just released this week.

According to the survey, 81 percent of hiring managers now have policies that allow employees to work remotely. In addition, 67 percent of hiring managers believe the number of employees who work remotely will grow by 2008.

Respondents to Computerword’s most recent annual Best Places to Work in IT survey cited telecommuting as an important facet of their jobs, with 36 percent calling it “extremely important.”

More here.

Related: The Telecommuting Trend

Anousheh Ansari is the first female Muslim in space, the first Iranian to reach Earth orbit, and perhaps the first civilian telecommuter in the ISS:

she has been trying to keep on top of her office work while she has been aboard, and has been receiving status reports from her staff at Prodea Systems, the telecommunications company she co-founded.

Article here.

Related: Directing a film from a hospital bed; attending college from home

Legislators in DC debate oil drilling this week, while an article on the discovery of a wrecked barge sunk to the bottom of Monterey Bay in 1990 asks, “Where can you get the most bang for the marine conservation buck?”

While the wreck has considerable historic and recreational value, the divers say, its greatest significance may be as a refuge for marine life.

Rockfish of the size and species that teem on the wreck have experienced drastic population declines in recent years, and severe fishing restrictions have been implemented to protect them. [...]

The wreck provides some empirical evidence supporting divers, anglers and conservationists who champion the creation of artificial reefs off the California coast as a means of boosting fish populations.

Their opinions, however, are by no means unanimous. Many environmentalists challenge the concept, saying ships and oil platforms require lengthy and expensive decontamination procedures before they can be safely used as rockfish condos.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported in its last Fishery Bulletin on a study that showed eight of California’s offshore oil and gas drilling rigs may account for 20% of the juvenile rockfishery. Sebastes paucispinis was an economically important rockfish species until overfishing reduced the population down to 7.4% of its previous size.

Skeptics be warned: the rockfish lobby may be behind the current push for opening federal waters to increased oil and gas drilling.

Earlier I mentioned a recent survey which found that few workers are interested in telecommuting. I was skeptical of that then, and now comes another survey that is more typical of most examinations of employee attitudes.

According to a July 19 survey by the Hudson Employment Index:

While only 23 percent of U.S. employees work from home or are given that option, most of the work force (59 percent) believes that telecommuting at least part-time is the ideal work situation. This includes the 38 percent who think a mix of coming into the office and working from home is preferable and the 21 percent who say working at home is the best.

...

Even among workers who are not given the choice, half report that working away from the office at least sometimes would be their preference. But those who have the option of clocking in from home take advantage of it when they can – 38 percent work from home a minimum of once a week. Just 20 percent rarely or never choose this option.

Press release here.

Meanwhile, across the pond:

Almost 5.5 million Britons now spend some or all of their week working remotely from home, with the majority concentrated in London and the South-East of England.

The Broadband User Survey from research firm Point Topic has found that some 4.3 million households in Britain – 18 per cent of all homes in the country – contain someone working from home.
…

Freelancer workers make up half the total, while four out of 10 are employees working remotely. The third, much smaller group of eight per cent are running a business from home with employees.

More here.

The world has more problems than resources needed to fight them all. What to do?

Russell Roberts points to this piece by John Baden, who recalls the Copenhagen Consensus Project , and then notes that the same sort of exercise was done again:

The experiment with economists was recently replicated by John Bolton, U.S. Ambassador to the UN. Not one to shrink from controversy, he empanelled UN diplomats from seven emerging nations, including India and China, to prioritize the issues. After hearing from experts in the problem areas, they ranked global crises ranging from climate change to migration. The top four were again health care, water and sanitation, education, and child nutrition. Climate change was, of course, dead last. No honest policy analyst would be surprised by these rankings.

While most agree that climate change is occurring, many proposed “solutions” are monumentally expensive, uncertain, and distant. They are, in sum, the sorriest of investments. Providing vitamin A, on the other hand, costs less than $1 per person per year, saves lives, and prevents childhood blindness. Encouraging breast feeding cheaply and effectively promotes infant health. These nutritional initiatives do not, however, offer a stage for pretense and drama. No matter how skilled the movie director, it’s hard to make public health reform a sexy issue.

One could argue that polar bears are more important than Pakistanis. The bears are indeed threatened by the melting of Arctic ice floes. Should we then invest to retard global warming, even if that investment could instead save millions of Pakistanis from easily preventable disease?

Related: Bjorn Lomborg on environmental priorities.

Here’s what the very same Prof. Kannan quoted in the previous post thinks:

telecommuting is one generation removed from a huge boom as younger workers who are more comfortable with technology, the MySpace generation, move into mid-management.

He says much of the resistance to telecommuting is age related, but that will change once the new generation moves into positions of authority.

Says Kannan:

“Today’s employers will continue to adopt formal communications applications, but in time they will understand that if something needs to be recreated, it is the environment that allows workers to chitchat privately,” he said. “You will find very few managers over 30 who will agree with that.”

But informal chats at the office usually involve some level of privacy. It’s unlikely that telecommuters will feel confident if the company is providing the environment where they are supposed to be candid with each other.

“There are technologies where you can have private conversations not hosted by the company, but younger workers place a much lower premium on that kind of privacy,” he said. “Maybe their need for privacy will grow as they get older, but they are used to sharing their thoughts on computers.”

Article here.

One-quarter of the U.S. work force could be doing their jobs from home if all those able to telecommute chose to do so, according to a study on Wednesday which said many still elect to work at the office.

All those people working from home could translate into annual gasoline savings of $3.9 billion, according to the National Technology Readiness Survey.

The study found that 2 percent of U.S. workers telecommute full-time and another 9 percent do so part-time.
But another 14 percent of workers have the option of telecommuting, or have jobs conducive to the practice but choose not to, the study found.

The numbers suggest that many people would rather work at the office even if their job allowed telecommuting, said Professor P.K. Kannan, of the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, which sponsored the study with Rockbridge Associates Inc., a Great Falls, Virginia research firm.

"That seems to suggest that even if employers were to say tomorrow that everybody had the option of telecommuting and you would save a lot of gas, that's not going to happen," Kannan said.

Sure, not everyone, perhaps not even most would telecommute if given the option, but that doesn’t mean we should assume workers aren’t interested in it and leave it at that. In most of the top 50 metro areas telecommuting already tops transit commuting and, apart from driving alone, it was the only commute mode to gain market share from 1980 to 2000. The evidence is pretty clear that the practice has continued to grow since 2000.

According to one recent survey, 80 percent of San Diego area folks who don’t telecommute say they would if given the chance. Do I think 80 percent of those surveyed really would telecommute? No way, but it still shows there’s pretty strong interest. And even if only, say, 20 percent really did end up working from home that would still make a big difference.

According to the National Technology Readiness Survey, of those who telecommute, most only do so one, two, or three days a week. But people should only do it as often as they want to, and the more people learn about part week (or even part day) telecommuting, the better.

My hunch is that many managers and employees quickly dismiss the idea because they assume telecommuting is an all-or-nothing choice. Few people will be able to ditch the office entirely, but as more people realize that telecommuting frequency can vary tremendously more will give telecommuting another look and figure out the best way to personalize the process of work.

Article here; thanks to Bobby B. for the tip.

Jeff Taylor poses the question to Charlotte:

A November study by the Reason Foundation found that telecommuters already outnumber transit commuters in Charlotte by two to one. Yet the Queen City's telecommute rate trails that of both Greensboro and Nashville, suggesting there is real room for improvement there. Common sense suggests it, too: Is there a more telecommute-ready workforce in America than uptown's legions of white-collar office workers?

Whole piece here.

My latest telecommuting piece is here.

And out comes black gold.

A plant in Carthage, Missouri turns turkey guts, and other kinds of filth, into oil:

The thermal conversion process can take material more plentiful and troublesome than straw—slaughterhouse waste, municipal sewage, old tires, mixed plastics, virtually all the wretched detritus of modern life—and make it something the world needs much more than gold: high-quality oil.

Brian Appel, the man behind it all, says “This is the first commercial biorefinery in the world that can make oil from a variety of waste streams."

As you might expect cost was a big issue. Appel underestimated costs and was overly optimistic about turning a profit. For most of the plant’s life he’s actually lost $40 per barrel. And there were other problems, like that horrendous stench:

But now, after more than $100 million in private funding and $17 million in government grants, several hurdles have tumbled. The Carthage plant has been optimized and is expected to turn a small profit. A tax credit has leveled the playing field with other renewable fuels like biodiesel and ethanol. Appel is confident that new ozone scrubbers and other equipment will abate the odors.

Article here.

Hewlett-Packard plans to consolidate its sprawling real estate holdings into more densely packed locations as part of its ongoing cost-reduction plan, the company announced Thursday.

The four-year review of HP's real estate kicked off a little less than a year after CEO Mark Hurd announced plans to aggressively cut costs within the company. Under the new program, HP wants to reduce the number of offices it maintains and to have a smaller number of "core sites," it said in a press release.

Article here; Thanks to Brad Hutchings for the tip.

Getting by with less office space is easier when you allow employees to telecommute, yet HP recently pulled most of its IT staff back to the office.

I've pointed out that there’s some evidence that government-sector managers, who have been even more resistant to telecommuting than their private-sector counterparts, are beginning to warm up to the idea.

Yet it still gets a chilly reception from many of these folks:

Top managers are holding back the spread of telecommuting at some government agencies, several officials said during a panel discussion earlier this month.

For government agencies to fully realize the benefits of telecommuting, such top managers need to change their attitudes, said Wendell Joice, head of the U.S. General Services Administration's governmentwide telework team.
"We are hampered by constantly having to beg and plead," said Joice, speaking at a conference called Continuity of Operations Planning in the Federal Government and Industry: Enabling a Mobile Workforce in Times of Crisis. The event, held here, was sponsored by iPass Inc., RSA Security Inc. and research firm Input Inc.

Article here.

Related: When telecommuters screw up (but was he really a telecommuter?)

Related: Report: Govt work safe to do at home

Speaking of the Knowledge Problem, I forgot to link earlier this month to a nice analysis Lynne did of FERC's report to Congress on Competition in the Wholesale and Retail Markets for Electric Energy.

The following nugget from the June 10 Richmond Times-Dispatch about a draft press release that Greenpeace accidentally put out speaks for itself:

Armageddonist

Once in a while the slick surface of public relations and spin-doctoring pulls back to reveal the messy -- and often entertaining -- truth. That happened recently when President Bush visited Pennsylvania to talk about nuclear energy.

Greenpeace was ready. Or almost ready. It prepared a "fact sheet" denouncing the Exelon Limerick Generating Station outside Pottstown where Bush made his remarks. "In the 20 years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident," it read, "there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."

A spokesman for the environmental group said it had not meant to release that early draft of the broadsheet. (It probably wouldn't have, if it took as much care to prevent accidents as the nuclear industry does.) Nevertheless, it's good to know Greenpeace sticks by its anti-nuke stance even when it can't explain why.
This story can be found at: http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?

USA TODAY:

The escalating price of gas is reviving interest in telecommuting as a way for employees to curb the growing cost of commuting to the office.

One recent example:

Sun Microsystems has seen an increase in employees interested in a flexible work program that lets employees work anywhere, including from home. More than 13,000 of Sun's employees work from home up to two days a week and about 2,000 work from home more than three days a week. It saves employees an average of two hours a week in commute time.

More here.

Responding to this post of mine in which I examine Hewlett Packard’s recent decision to bring nearly all of its IT staff back to the office, Brett from Oregon writes:

One assumption in this blog post is that HP wants to retain talent.

I currently live in an HP town, and HP has been laying off workers left and right. There has not been a single job posting in years. It is widely believed that HP is trying to eliminate facilities and reduce payroll. The layoffs are so severe in Oregon that HP has brokered a deal whereby their layoff numbers are kept secret.

Odds are, this rule change away from telecommuting and flexible work schedules is an attempt to get rid of workers who require these flexible schedules. This would reduce unemployment costs from eventual layoffs as well as operational costs.

Interesting point. Bernie Goldbach seems to agree:

WANT TO SQUEEZE your workforce before they cash in on pensions? Then change work practises on them.

…

HP has a bulge at the 15/50 point--I reckon around 600 people. That's a trainload full of employees who have been with the company for nearly 15 years or that's a cohort of seasoned experience approaching 50 years of age. They have to squeeze that cohort because it's expensive labour with attitude. It's much easier to impose a lower cost-per-employee on a work force that's younger and more flexible about work practises and company policies. H-P people with the experience have roots in communities, often hundreds of miles away form their assigned office cubicles. They probably will resign their positions rather than pay the extra petrol charges or move house. And that cuts wage costs at H-P. It also sheds a lot of expertise in places like enterprise services and if imposed with a clock-in system at the main doorway, it could place the efficiency of the printer division at risk.

HP has been a pioneer in telecommuting and flexible work schedules, but now nearly all IT employees must report to work at the office:

The decision shocked HP employees and surprised human resource management experts, who believe telecommuting is still a growing trend.

…

By August, almost all of HP's IT employees will have to work in one of 25 designated offices during most of the week. With many thousands of HP IT employees scattered across 100 sites around the world -- from Palo Alto to Dornach, Germany -- the new rules require many to move. Those who don't will be out of work without severance pay, according to several employees affected by the changes.
…

The architect of the HP division's change, Randy Mott, is regarded by Wall Street as a mastermind of operational efficiency based on his days as chief information officer at Wal-Mart Stores and Dell. Since joining HP as CIO in July, Mott's philosophy on building a strong IT workforce starkly contrasts with that of competitors, who encourage telecommuting to retain skilled workers who desire better work/life balance.

Mott said by bringing IT employees together to work as teams in offices, the less-experienced employees who aren't performing well -- which there are ``a lot of'' -- can learn how to work more effectively.

In an office, ``you're able to put teams together that can learn very aggressively and rapidly from each other,'' he said.

Sure. But you also risk losing talented people who wouldn’t work for you if telecommuting weren’t an option. One woman has worked at HP for about 20 years and she says she’s not going to uproot her family and move across the country to her designated California office:

``Why is HP telling us we can't do this when everybody else is saying, `Please do'? That's kind of bizarre,'' said the employee, who didn't want to be identified for fear of retribution. ``I like my flexibility. The only reason I've stayed with HP this long is because I've been telecommuting.''

Some problems HP had with telecommuting:

one of HP's former IT managers, who left the company in October, said a few employees abused the flexible work arrangements and could be heard washing dishes or admitted to driving a tractor during conference calls about project updates.

Admitted to driving a tractor? Seems like operating heavy equipment isn’t really a sensory gray area. But all this is easily fixed with a simple rule that is so obvious that most people don’t need it spelled out for them: No loud background noises while you’re on a conference call.

The former manager, who declined to be identified because he still has ties with HP, said telecommuting morphed from a strategic tool used to keep exceptional talent into a right that employees claimed.

Sounds like this has more to do with bad management than with telecommuting itself. Managers who make it clear that telecommuting is a privilege find that employees work hard to earn the right to stay home and they also work hard to keep the valued perk.

It’ll be interesting to see how much talent HP loses and to see if this move will have any sort of ripple effect.

Article here.

My recent piece on why managers should give telecommuting another look is here.

With all the hubbub about gas prices it’s probably not surprising that some states are using the promise of free gas to lure tourists. The 13th Floor points out that Minnesota won’t be offering such relief.

Why not?

"Frankly, we think there's no need to, because we haven't seen any reduction in travel because of high gas prices," said Joan Hummel, a spokeswoman for Explore Minnesota, the state's travel office.

Minnesota’s low-key approach seems to be the right one.

From the May 1 WSJ:

prices would have to be higher than they are today -- and would have to stay high for a long time -- to meaningfully curb gasoline consumption by the nation's massive fleet of cars and trucks, which accounts for about 10% of global oil use.

That’s not to say that higher prices have no effect on behavior:

At the margins, there are some signs that high gasoline prices may be starting to alter consumer behavior. Traditionally, gasoline use in the U.S. rises about 1.5% each year. But in three of the six months from September -- immediately following the Gulf Coast hurricanes -- through February, gasoline consumption fell compared with a year earlier, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. In the three months in which it grew, it never rose by more than 0.4%. Yet in March, as gasoline prices soared, demand appeared to return to more-robust levels, growing by 1%, according to preliminary data.

"There's definitely a noticeable decrease in the growth of demand," says Tancred Lidderdale, senior economist at the Energy Information Administration. "The problem is demand is still growing."

Though the recent run-up in gasoline prices has been steep, it hasn't been debilitating for most Americans. The price of a gallon of regular gas averaged $2.74 in April, according to the Energy Information Administration. Adjusted for inflation, that was still 14% below the peak in March 1981, when, in today's dollars, gasoline averaged $3.18.

Moreover, Americans are better-positioned to handle a run-up in fuel prices than they were a quarter-century ago. Gasoline now accounts for only 3% of total personal-consumption spending, down from 5% in 1981, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. That gives many consumers less reason to contemplate cutbacks when prices rise.

Apparently, forgoing any and all driving on Sunday will solve all the world's ills, even the age-old issue of GREED! (If only all those folks condemned to an eternity of boiling oil in hell for committing the mortal sin of greed had known all they had to do for absolution was not drive on Sunday!)

So says the Don't Drive on Sunday website:

FIGHT GREEDY OIL COMPANIES - DON'T DRIVE ON SUNDAY!

Why are we paying more than Three Dollars per Gallon? GREED.
Why is every oil company raking in billions of dollars in profits? GREED.
Why has the current administration allowed this to happen? GREED!

Hmm. So it's greed that determines the price of gas? It's greed that creates profits?
How strange; all this time I thought it was the market that determined price and profit ... yet apparently panic has more pull than I thought.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to less traffic on Sundays.

I just saw a license plate border that read: “saving the planet one hybrid at a time.”

It was attached to a hybrid Ford Escape AKA an SUV!

Perhaps the reputation of SUV owners (at least hybrid SUV owners) has come full circle.

From a 2003 article of mine:

There was a time when SUV owners were depicted as robust outdoor enthusiasts and sporty soccer moms. Then as SUVs bulked up and became less fuel-efficient, public opinion started to turn against them and their owners. Buying an SUV stopped being simply a reflection of the owner as a consumer, and more about the owner as a moral agent. In some circles, buying an SUV was no longer a choice, it was a sin.

SUV foes demanded to know why someone would suck up natural resources, and trash the planet just to intimidate other drivers with his street-legal monster truck? As the moralizing mounted, the social standing of SUV owners continued to erode. Today, SUV owners can only claim moral superiority over the likes of smokers and spammers.

But I wonder how drivers of super-efficient hybrids feel about Escape owners who brag about their eco-friendliness. And as I pointed out here, many owners of regular non-hybrid cars have plenty to boast about too.

BTW, the most self-righteous message on the back of a hybrid is still: “How many lives per gallon do you get?”

Watch the South Part "Smug Alert!" episode here.

With this bed/office telecommuters can even fit a home office in one of Manhattan’s 250 square foot studio apartments.

Georgia businesses that encourage employees to work from home will get an income tax break under a measure signed into law by Gov. Sonny Perdue on Thursday.

The law, one of the first in the nation, gives employers a state income tax credit of up to $20,000 if they conduct a study on how to implement a teleworking program for their business.

The measure also rewards employers who implement teleworking programs by giving them a tax credit of up to $1,200 per employee for a percentage of their telework expenses in calendar years 2008 and 2009.

Article here.

Some interesting telecommuting bits (including a quotation by yours truly) in this column.

Here’s one:

At Apani Networksin Brea, many of its 90 employees telecommute. This lets some workers skip rush-hour traffic and come to work quicker and refreshed. Others work at home all day when concentrating on projects without headquarters hassles.

"When you're working with creative people, how many of them with have an ah-ha moment at home at the dinner table? When those flashes of intuition arrive, you want to test them out as quickly as you can," says marketing boss David Lynch of telecommuting's edge. "We tend to treat our people as being capable of managing their own day-to-day objectives."

Is oil independence a good national security strategy? Reason's Shikha Dalmia writes:

As the nuclear stand-off with Iran helped push oil prices to near-record levels, President Bush once again declared, "Dependency on oil creates an economic problem for us, and it creates a national security problem for us." But if Iran's behavior makes the case for anything at all, it is that America should become more – not less – "dependent" on foreign oil. In fact, the best way for America to defuse the so-called Middle Eastern oil weapon is by purchasing even more oil from the region.

...Our dependence on Middle Eastern oil is only the flip side of their dependence on our purchases. But given the narrow base of Middle Eastern economies, the power in the relationship is firmly on the side of the oil buyers. If that relationship were to end because of "energy independence," we would give up crucial leverage to control the worst behavior of some of the world's worst regimes. Of course, this leverage is no magic wand that would protect us from a totally irrational regime willing to absorb the economic cost of using the oil weapon. But the more oil we get from such a regime, the higher the price it would have to pay.

Full column here.

Ronald Bailey's Reason magazine cover story: Peak Oil Panic

Sam Staley: Republicans and Gas Prices: Look in the Mirror