Dreaded commutes to work and back are over – for now.
As shelter-in-place orders have shuttered businesses across California to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, many technology workers continue to code and develop software from home.
Decreased vehicle exhaust on the road could lower the majority of California’s greenhouse gas emissions, said Patrick Brown, a SJSU meteorology and climate science professor.
“In order to decarbonize transportation, we either need to drive less . . . or we need to convert these gas-burning cars into electric cars,” Brown said.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere.
In California study from 2000-2017, 41% of greenhouse gases were caused by the transportation sector, which was the highest source of these gases in the state, according to the California Air Resources Board.
“When I used to go to somebody’s desk, now I do a quick five minute phone call,” said Mirko Jurcan, a 2019 San Jose State business administration alumnus and research associate at the SJSU Research Foundation which works with NASA.
Jurcan said he remotely connects with about 40 people for his work with NASA, using software such as Google Meet, Cisco AnyConnect and Microsoft Teams.
“My prediction in the next couple of years is that we’re going to see the cancellation of these big sprawling developments right here in San Jose because of the fact that this coronavirus has shown tech companies they can have remote workers and not pay for the overhead of an office building,” he said.
Cutting the use of commercial buildings could reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California, Brown said, because commercial buildings produce large carbon footprints.
“It’s not very energy efficient that we have these houses that we live in and then we kind of keep the temperature at the same temperature all day,” Brown said “Then we go to these buildings that are lighted and have major heat and air conditioning needs and then we sit in the buildings and use a bunch of electricity on a different computer there that’s plugged in all day.”
In Silicon Valley, big tech companies have still moved forward with plans to develop sprawling work sites in big cities, such as the planned Google campus in Downtown San Jose.
Construction on the project has yet to start, but the San Jose City Council delayed the development’s approval process, according to a statement from Kim Walesh, San Jose’s director of economic development.
“I think that Google should have a lot of foresight in this area and for whatever reason they thought that it’s still better to bring everyone together in one place,” Brown said. “So if they thought that they could run their business just as well by being totally distributed . . . I think if they thought that that works as well as anything else, they would have already done that.”
According to a Google carbon offset report, the company reduces its carbon footprint “through efficiency improvements, generating on-site solar power, purchasing green power and investing in green projects.”
However, a 2019 open letter to Google on climate action signed by more than 2,300 employees showed that the tech giant had made donations to climate change deniers and offered to provide software to oil drilling companies.
A Google spokesperson was not available for comment on this article.
Despite the drastic changes to work habits over the past month and a half, some tech workers believe on-site work is still a necessity and that it should resume once it’s safe to be around large numbers of people.
A Google contractor, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because of Google’s policies barring contractors from speaking to the media, said the company designs its coworking space as more than just an office.
“The culture at Google is a low-stress environment and there’s a lot of amenities you can utilize on a daily basis, so it entices you to work there and be comfortable there,” the contractor said. “For example, if you need to do your laundry, you can take your clothes and do laundry while you do some work or take a bootcamp class or yoga class or whatever you want.”
But returning to work around others is not in the foreseeable future, which means remote work is becoming the norm for many people in tech.
“It’s good to have quick, instant access to your coworkers,” 2019 SJSU alumnus Jurcan said. “That’s not to say that we’re not effective now . . . everyone’s very responsive.”
Despite California’s lowered greenhouse gas emissions from people working remotely, it only accounts for a small part in reducing global warming, Brown said.
Brown noted that the state is managing to decouple economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions, according to the California Air Resources Board, allowing the economy to grow as greenhouse gas emissions decrease.
“In places like San Jose, we can stay at home, and do a lot of our work still from home and that does help with our carbon footprint in this location,” Brown said. “But for the globe sense, this is a global problem and it's all about global CO2 and methane emissions. This type of thing is really small in terms of its impact.”
Most greenhouse gas emissions come from developing countries such as China, India and Nigeria, Brown said.
He said as these countries grow their economy and population, energy consumption can jump up to 50% of what developed countries use, which can be precarious for greenhouse gas emissions if that energy is from coal or oil.
Brown said in order to lessen greenhouse gases, energy policies must change.
However, even if reducing California’s emissions has a minimal effect on a global scale, Brown still supports smaller-scale changes.
“I can definitely see that we shouldn’t return totally to normal,” he said. “Anything that is easy to do remotely should be done remotely.”
