For nearly 76 percent of Americans in 2019, this was a typical workweek: Wake up, get dressed, pile into a car alone, work, drive home, sleep ... and repeat five times.

But starting in March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced many employees who weren't essential workers to switch to internet-enabled remote work, that routine shattered. For many, it would never be the same again.

While remote work grew gradually in the four decades leading up to the pandemic, it "surged" in 2020, according to a working paper from the U.S. Labor Department. In 2022, after vaccines reduced previously staggering death rates, the U.S. Census reported that the share of American workers driving alone to work was 68.7 percent. On the surface, that is just a 7 percent reduction in solo commuters — but it also represents millions of people no longer driving alone by car twice a day.

While the number of people who take public transit to their workplace or walk or bike there has also shrunk significantly since COVID, the shift to remote work and its related reduction in vehicular miles driven is a rare silver lining of the pandemic.

Fully remote workers can have a 54 percent lower carbon footprint than onsite workers, according to a 2023 study from Microsoft and Cornell University.

Researchers found that even hybrid workers, those splitting their time between home and office work, contribute to a significant drop in carbon emissions. That makes sense considering the average passenger vehicle emits about 400 grams of CO2 per mile, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Increased home use of computers, phones, and internet services has a negligible effect on carbon emissions, according to the study. Still, the benefits of remote work are not perfectly linear.

The Cornell researchers found that Americans’ personal car usage — such as driving to errands or social events — actually increases the more days they work remotely. Those who work a hybrid schedule often live farther from the office than those fully onsite — so the days they drive, they expend more carbon than those going into the office full-time.

Read the full article about how remote work helps the environment by Neal Broverman at Mashable.