Work From Home and Drive More Slowly To Save Energy, IEA Says (bbc.com)
- Reference: 0181062976
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/03/20/2035252/work-from-home-and-drive-more-slowly-to-save-energy-iea-says
- Source link: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg4540d0g4o
> Thirty-two countries are members of the IEA, including the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Japan and 24 other European nations. Its role is to act as a global watchdog, providing analysis and recommendations on global energy problems, such as energy security and the transition to clean energy. The IEA's other suggestions for governments, businesses and individuals include:
>
> - Promoting use of public transport
> - Giving private cars access to city centres on alternate days
> - Encouraging car sharing and efficient driving habits
> - Avoiding air travel where possible, especially business flights
> - Switching to electric cooking
>
> It also said there should be a focused effort to preserve liquid petroleum gas for cooking and other essential uses, by switching bio-fuel converted vehicles onto gas and introducing other measures to reduce its use. Birol said these proposals were in addition to action taken by IEA member countries earlier this month, when they agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil, 20% of its emergency reserves.
Several countries in Asia have implemented emergency [3]four-day workweeks and work-from-home mandates as they have been hit particularly hard from the conflict. Fortune notes: "Asia is particularly dependent on oil exports from the Middle East; Japan and South Korea respectively source 90% and 70% of their oil from the region."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg4540d0g4o
[3] https://fortune.com/2026/03/11/iran-war-fuel-crisis-asia-work-from-home-closed-schools-price-caps/
Energy Crisis (Score:4, Insightful)
By "energy crisis" do you mean petty asshole starting a war in the middle east like the last two republican presidents?
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And invading another country. And treathening to invade two other allied countries and NATO members.
But what's the point ? The only rebuttals you'll get from the resident trumptards will be something about Obama or Biden, or some emails or some laptop. Oh, and TDS. Let's not forget TDS.
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Pretty much standard operating procedure then.
The sky is falling....? (Score:1)
Alright...I'm seeing more and more of these type articles.
Maybe it's because I'm in the US, but aside from some rise in gas prices...nothing major in my area....this hasn't affected my life so far in the least.
Can some of you in EU give a clearer picture of if this is really hitting ya'll in a meaningful way at this point?
So far I see all these "Chicken Little" type article and I'm just not personally seeing it.
I was a kid in the 70's....and while it got bad in the US for a bit, life did't stop and the
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> when gas was expensive during covid
Dunno what happened in your neck of the woods during Covid, but here in central FL, gas got extremely cheap during Covid because almost no one was driving anywhere .
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Same in Southern California. It was pretty awesome having reasonably empty freeways and cheaper gas. It even went under $4 (unheard of for Californians). Oh and our insurance dropped as well because fewer people driving means fewer accidents. All and all, it was a decent time for anyone that was essential and had to go to work.
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If affects us to some degree. Petrol - for those that use it - is a bit more expensive, and it probably will disturb still fossil-sources industrial supply chains after a while. There is still natural gas dependency, we don't want to buy from the invading dictator in Russia, and the supply may also diminish.
But we generally have more sensible cities, where it's rather easy to ride a bike or even walk to services, kindergarten and often to work. And public transit is much more abundant, even if of course peo
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Just wait.
The fuel price hikes we are seeing today are the result of the futures market pricing in a lack of crude production for contract delivery.
Nobody has even started pricing in scarcity, which will hit when those futures contracts do not get delivered, and there is less refined petroleum distillates available than orders. That's when we're gonna see a spike in prices that is going to make the last two weeks look like Fischer-Price "My First Petrowar" pricing - when demand outstrips supply.
We are only
Silver lining on a very gray cloud. (Score:3)
I am happy about renewed interest and political pressure in favor of working from home. Such events help to persuade business leaders who still (selfishly and ignorantly) insist that people should work from an office even when their role does not require it.
Of course, I would never wish for something like the Iran conflict in order to create this political pressure. It would be much better if public awareness and acceptance of the environmental consequences of widespread business travel (including driving to work every day) would create the necessary political pressure.
But, that's not the world we live in, unfortunately.
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In order to understand business leaders' push to back to the office, you need only understand commercial real estate. If people don't come back to the office, businesses supporting these behemoths close down too - it's overnight recession, and land / office values crater.
Maybe WFH could be done over the span of 30+ years or more in order to stabilize things, but I don't see a large-scale work from home happening any time soon.
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Sounds like commercial property owners that can't lease their commercial space might want to look into converting into residential housing. Seems there's still a booming market for that, especially if they compete on price.
But that's just me, thinking of solutions rather than just whining about it. Time to adapt or die.
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It's a fair statement, and one I long thought very possible. I watched a pretty long video on why it actually doesn't work out quite frequently for commercial buildings to be converted into residential housing. It was an eye opener. Apparently quite a few would require being razed to the ground and just start anew, something extraordinarily expensive and time consuming.
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That's not cheap to do though and in many of the places with these office buildings, there are really tedious permitting processes that take place. If it were even close to a solution, we would see a whole lot more of it.
Not saying it's not something that could be done but so far, it hasn't been a major thing.
Perhaps now (Score:3)
We will move fast to roll out new renewables. Ignoring the political shitshow it just shows even more we need to see the end of oil and gas. We won't but we should.
Promote healthy lifestyle (Score:1)
First de-incentivised EV use in his One Big Beautiful Bill, and now is de-incentivising IC use by cutting off oil supplies. The plan all along was to make us walk again!
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Not a fan of the BBB, but it could have been much worse. There could have been an annual tax on EV's and hybrids, but it didn't make it into the final version. No doubly they'll try if the do another reconciliation bill this year or next year.
They want you to have to buy that "motion lotion" from them for transportation energy, not manufacture it your self with a one time purchase of solar panels and an electric car. Why do you think they tried to push H2 fuel cell powered vehicles over BEV's?
You are to hav
Better tell (Score:2)
Drive more slowly?
Better tell the folks from (to start with):
California
Illinois
Texas
These folks think that every road in the country is the Autobahn and can drive at unlimited speeds.
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Clearly you've never been to Utah, Montana or Idaho. Long stretches of nothing and the legal posted limits are 80, so of course people will push that to 90.
Having billionaires telling me to work from home (Score:2)
So they can bomb Iran and try to steal some of their oil while allowing Trump to soak up big fat bribes from israel, Qatar and Saudi Arabia is extraordinarily disingenuous when the same billionaires took away work from home so they could maintain the property values on their commercial real estate.
Donald Trump still has a 40% approval rating and all I can think of is who the fuck approves of Donald Trump? Like I get the quarter of the country that would do anything for the Republican party but for every
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Look on the bright side, at least they didn't say "cut out the avocado toast."
At the end of the day, expensive gas is just something most Americans will just complain about and then just deal with it. There has been the option to buy more efficient vehicles for quite awhile now, and yet the best selling models are still ginormous gas guzzlers. Hell, even my younger brother just did that right before the war started - he bought a used Volvo SUV with a giant V8. I told him to get a Chevy Bolt before the ta
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This. Even though it affects me as well, I personally don't care if the gas price goes up to $10. The idiots deserve to suffer and that's a surefire way to see it happen. It would be especially nice if we could some how keep diesel down but let unleaded go up.
Of course, I drive a hybrid, plan my route and don't tend to make extra trips to the store when it can just wait until tomorrow before or after work. As you mentioned, people have had DECADES!!! to buy more efficient vehicles and they decide to buy gin
Biking? (Score:1)
Where Does Biking Fit in? Why don't they recommend that to more people. Now that the weather is getting warmer, I'm starting to bike to the office I work at.
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Wish I could, but it's just too dangerous. Around here when you get squished by a motorized vehicle, the driver gets a do-over and you get a grave. My government does not take reckless drivers off the road. Read this frightening expose: [1]https://calmatters.org/investigation/2025/04/license-to-kill/ [calmatters.org]
[1] https://calmatters.org/investigation/2025/04/license-to-kill/
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Yeah, recurring issues with drivers is a problem that states need to look at more seriously. One of my company offices is in the bay area, I know of a few cyclist there that have said how bad it can be at different times and places. It's unforunate that us cyclist basically have to "fight" to exist almost anywhere. Luckily for me, my state all the drivers are pretty reasonable, the worse problem I deal with sometimes is someone trying to make a right hand turn and sit in the bike lane to do it. Every time I
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Considering it's 95F 20 miles from the beach in San Diego as I type this, cycling is out. Maybe along the coast line, but our bicycle infrastructure is terrible here. Possibly the worst part of it is, where are you suppose to put your bike where a homeless won't steal it? I've never seen a bicycle locker in person. Also, my work doesn't have showers, so I'm not showing up covered in sweat.
Believe me, I love the IDEA of cycling for transportation, but it's not practical in Southern California at all. To many
It's just temporary (Score:2)
Once this war is over, not only will oil & gas traffic resume: Iranian oil too will be back on the markets. At which point, it'll be like it was at the end of Covid
In an employer's market with all the layoffs... (Score:2)
It will likely be "Work at the office or be terminated for cause". If the market was the other way around, then it energy shortage would have the desired effect, but that's not the market dynamic at this point.
Now, if the energy shortage persists, then an employee's market would turn to an employer's market due to a recession caused by the high price of energy.
I'm thinking that a recession due to energy costs is coming. Once it does, and we get though the other side, maybe electric vehicles and solar panels
Hormuz has frozen 20% of the oil and gas (Score:2)
I'm actually a bit confused as to why this is blowing up the way it is. 20 percent of oil and LNG are frozen because of Hormuz. That's not good, but coal, nuclear and renewables are basically unaffected. Seems like a problem of this magnitude shouldn't be causing the entire world to have a collective aneurism.
Gas prices go up a tad. People drive slightly less. Industrial chemicals get slightly pricier. People telecommute a bit more. None of this is good (except the telecommuting) but it shouldn't be gri
So here's the question (Score:2)
Why do employers and bosses demanding return to office hate America so much?
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Because they can. The employees cost of energy doesn't confront them. They know the voters won't elect someone who will put teeth in the labor laws, because the voters will never see a candidate who will take on that challenge. It would be political suicide, because the monied interests would open the floodgates on the money for attack ads.
Work from home? I'm all in! (Score:2)
Drive more slowly? What does that mean? What country do they think this is, anyway!
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> Drive more slowly? What does that mean? What country do they think this is, anyway!
I think the country they think this is is one of 29.
That said, I confess to being more than a little bit smug, already owning an EV and living where basically all of our electricity is either hydro-electric (natural waterfalls, not dams) or nuclear.
While the price of everything is going to go up because trucks & everyone else aren't.
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> That said, I confess to being more than a little bit smug, already owning an EV ...
I do too, but I'm fully expecting utility rates to be jacked up just because they can. I've got a hedge against that though, too. Awhile back I got an e-scooter for short trips and for taking on the train to avoid the expense of parking downtown. It's certainly not something that works for every trip (especially with Florida's weather being what it is), but the energy costs to ride it are basically a rounding error.
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It is easy to be smug as an EV owner, particularly now local news reports we have reach around 96.4% renewable electricity generation here in New Zealand. In my case I charge from solar panel on my house. The problem is all the indirect effects such as rising shipping cost due the slow electrification of the transport industry and other non-transport needs. For heating once again things are not too bad here as electrical heating is most common, but other countries are quite badly impacted. Then there ar
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Many roles can't work from home, given the nature of the role. So, they get a free pass. That makes it even more important for those of us who can work from home to do so (and for employers to allow and encourage this).
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Is it really saving electricity when everyone is running their individual ACs as opposed to going into a central office that runs it's AC (which it runs regardless)? Be interesting to see the numbers.
Of course working from home will save gasoline, so that's a good enough reason.
Regarding the neuron surgeon, he could possibly work from home. With the advancements in robotics and ultra high speed Internet, I think s/he could very well work from home. [1]https://www.bbc.com/future/art... [bbc.com] is an example of it in t
[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140516-i-operate-on-people-400km-away
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Homes are often occupied anyway during the day, and even if they aren't, most of them have the AC set to something below 80. It not generally energy efficient to recool a house that's been heated to 100 degrees during the day back to the low seventies.
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It means wind resistance increases non-linear with velocity through atmosphere.
i.e. the faster you drive, the more fuel it takes to get to the destination.
This isn't hard to figure out.
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LOL Yeah I'm aware. My point was that Americans don't know what driving "more slowly" means.
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Maybe not for much longer. The AC will get set to 30C and the the thermostats will be behind locked covers. What are you going to do, QUIT?... No, you have to pay homage to the landlord or mortgage god.