Office buildings across the country are filling up again as the air outside grows thicker with climate-warming gases. Federal agencies, state governments and many corporations now require employees to commute five days a week, reversing the remote-work flexibility adopted in 2020. Mounting research shows that those mandates carry a heavy environmental cost.

A new satellite analysis by Mark Ma at the University of Pittsburgh, Betty Xing at Baylor University and Ling Zhang at Rowan University tracks carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide over the 10 most and 10 least flexible U.S. metropolitan areas. Using both NASA and European satellite instruments, the authors measured concentrations within a 20-mile radius of each downtown from 2017 to 2023. The flexible metros — places where remote and hybrid schedules remain common — kept carbon emission levels roughly flat between 2019 and 2022, whereas the least flexible metros endured a marked uptick. Nitrogen dioxide, a traffic pollutant, plunged everywhere when lockdowns began but rebounded far faster in rigid, office-centric cities.

Those findings highlight the commuting tailpipe as a decisive source of urban greenhouse gases.

Independent laboratory research aligns with the satellite record. A 2023 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calculated that moving from full-time office work to full-time work from home slashes an employee’s work-related carbon footprint by as much as 58 percent. Employees who stay home two to four days a week still cut emissions 11 to 29 percent, whereas a token “one day remote” policy trims only 2 percent because extra errands and higher home energy use cancel most of the advantage.

Modeling by Cornell........

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