Measuring emissions from home working

Capturing the additional energy use and associated carbon emissions from employees who work from home, rather than commuting to and working in an ERM office, gives us a more complete understanding of our Scope 3 emissions. During FY21, ERM developed a methodology to approximate our carbon footprint from home workers. We collected data from our employees using the Check-In App that we created to track where employees are working each day. We used this data to test the Ecometrica Homeworker Module, which calculates the additional energy demand associated with home working, applying residential heating and cooling data based on country-specific emission factors.

Using this methodology, we calculated 2,413 tCO2e associated with the additional energy demand from our employees working from home in FY21. To put this into perspective, in FY20 our employee commuting emissions were 6,636 tCO2e vs. 530 tCO2e in FY21, a decrease of 92%.

ERM is not including the estimated energy demand associated with working from home in our total GHG footprint, as we are seeking to improve the robustness of the methodology and assess any standards or guidance that we expect to be published in the coming year. Through our technical experts and the industry associations we belong to, we are contributing to the these efforts. We will continue to improve our methodology and report on the emissions from home working and commuting as part of our publicly reported climate-related risk data.​