Earth Day yesterday highlighted a lot of environmental issues such as global warming and pollution. But if you think things are bad now consider this: by 2050 the world is going to need 30 terrawatts, 30 trillion watts, just to keep pace with our current energy use. We’re using 12 or 13 terrawatts now worldwide. So we’re going to have to come up with 17 more and find some way to do it that doesn’t make the environment worse. How?

Biomass is a popular option, but let’s say we plant crops everywhere they’ll grow, which is only about 5% of the planet (remember 70% is ocean). If we did plant everywhere, and then we burned it all to get the maximum energy possible (without doing anything at all to keep it clean), we’d get maybe 7 terrawatts. We’re still ten short, and there’s smoke everywhere.

How about wind? If you extracted every bit of energy available worldwide in the wind 30 feet above the ground you get 2 terrawatts. More if you can figure out how to tap the fast moving jetstream at 30,000 feet, but we’ll use the 2 terrawatt number until we figure out how to build really tall windmills. Still eight short.

Water? Almost not worth the effort. Dam ever river in the world, and you’d get a lot of backed up silt, a lot less fish, and a mere .7 terrawatts of energy. Call it one terrawatt in round numbers, and now we’re seven short.

Okay, how ’bout nuclear? It’s great for energy efficiency–a nuclear powerplant can generate a gigawatt–and there’s no CO₂ emissions as a by-product. But if we want 7 terrawatts of energy by 2050 from nuclear power, that means we’ll need to build 7,000 powerplants in 45 years. That’s one every 2.3 days!

Okay then, coal? Good news, bad news; it’s cheap and it’s dirty. There’s lots of it too, but so far we haven’t figured out how to convert it to energy without polluting ourselves to death, even to extinction. Not that that has stopped the Chinese. Their coal consumption has doubled since 1990. They’re building the equivalent of two mid-size power plants a week, adding the capacity of the entire UK power grid each year. And they recently passed the US in CO₂ emissions. We’ll skip coal.

So what have we got if we do all this? No more food for us or for cattle because we’ve burned everything that’ll grow, we’ve stopped up every dammed river, and we’ve covered the countryside with nuclear cathedrals to consumption. All just to keep pace with existing energy needs.

But if everyone on the globe wanted to live like an American in 2050 we have to assume that their energy needs (and ours) go up with GDP, so we really need 102 terrawatts, not 30.

See the problem?

Now consider this:

• In spite of America’s growing demand for energy, no new petroleum refineries have been built and no new nuclear power plants have been ordered in the past 30 years. (France now derives 78% of its electric power from nuclear sources; Lithuania, 72%; Belgium, 54%; Armenia, 42%; Japan, 30%; and the United States, 19%.)

• There are now 12 energy companies in the world whose reserves exceed those of the largest US energy firm, ExxonMobil.

• During the past 30 years, 40% of new petroleum production came from industrialized nations. It is estimated that during the next 40 years, 90% will come from developing nations.

We’re promoting the idea of working from home–telecommuting–for work/life balance reasons, among others. But there are also some compelling environmental reasons too. Remember, as we discussed yesterday, if everyone that could work from home did, we could cut petroleum demands by 80%. That’s a start.

So while the work from home idea may seem radical, it looks to us as if it’s inevitable, and some other very extreme changes are going to occur in the next few years that we all need to think about today. The future ain’t what it used to be.

UPDATE: Nice to know I’m not the only one that thinks our nation could use a little adult leadership.

Research Shows Working From Home Could Reduce Greenhouse Gases by 100 Million Tons and Cut Persian Gulf Oil Dependence by 75%

With Earth Day only a few days away (April 22), we decided to quantify how much telecommuting could save, and how much more it could do to save the planet. What we figured out is astounding — if the people who could work from home actually did, we could tell the Middle East to pound sand and take a big bite out of global warming as well.

Our conclusions are based on an analysis of data from EPA, DOT, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Consumer Electronics Association, Matthews and Williams, The Reason Foundation, the Energy Administration, and Census Bureau data. All pretty credible sources, wouldn’t you agree?

Currently, only four percent of the U.S. workforce works from home, but research shows that about 40% have jobs that could be performed at home. Our analysis shows that if they did, these 50 million new teleworkers could annually save 587 million barrels of oil (roughly equivalent to 74% of our annual Gulf Oil imports), reduce greenhouse gases by 101 million metric tons of CO₂, and save almost $52 billion at the pump. Each worker individually would save 26 work-days and over $1,000 — time and money now wasted commuting. That’s the equivalent of an extra 5 weeks vacation a year!

These findings are the result of our ongoing effort to quantify the costs and benefits of telecommuting for workers, employers, communities, and the nation. To find our how much gas your city, county or region could pass by encouraging people to work from home, or how much your existing telecommuters already save, check out our work-at-home research page. Incidentally, we’ll customize the data—free of charge—for reporters, government agencies, companies, and other organizations who want to know the potential impact more work-from-home could have on their carbon footprint. Requests can be submitted via email to info (at) undress4success (dot) com.

While telework offers individuals who can work from home a better work/life balance, it also offers companies real increases in productivity, higher worker satisfaction, and reduced costs. For the community, telecommuting offers reduced highway congestion, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and less dependence on foreign oil.

Have you hugged a telecommuter today? If not, here are 28 reasons why you should. Play hooky and pass gas yourself.

______________________

Bookmark Undress4Success.com for ongoing research about work-from-home jobs and home based business opportunities. The whole story will be available later this year in our new book Undress4Success: The Naked Truth About Working From Home (March 2009, John Wiley & Sons).

Ravi Gajendran and David Harrison with the Department of Management and Organization at Penn State conducted an meta-study, reviewing 46 other studies involving almost 13,000 employees that work at home. No surprise to us, they found that working from home is good for business and for people; but now we have quantifiable proof.

One key benefit of telecommuting, they found, is that it lets workers take control over their work and work environment. They can control when they take breaks, what they wear (hey, this is Undress4Success, after all!), and how they arrange their office space. They can choose decor, temperature and ventilation, lighting and even music. Most of all they get to decide when and how they do their job as long as the work gets done

Another real advantage of working from home is people can decide when they are going to work and what their going to do. But more, they, they can combine work and family obligations and reduce the tension inherent in those competing demands. Taking time to go with the kids to sports or pick up groceries can be scheduled into the day along with work “to-do’s”.

One surprising finding of the super-study was that researchers found that telecommuting had a positive effect on supervisor-staff relationships. Apparently both employer and employee apparently make an extra effort to keep each other informed. Working from home may mean supervisor and subordinate see each other less, but the quality of their contact evidently increases.

Stress reduction is another plus: less heart pounding traffic jousting, less out of pocket lunch money, less spent on business clothes, better supervisor-staff relationships, combined with less tension at home make working from home less stressful.

No surprise this, but people who have more control over their work, who can spend more family time, and who enjoy autonomy are more satisfied and less likely to quit their jobs. Having the opportunity to work at home also promotes a sense of loyalty to the organization, it turns out.

In fact, people who are ready to quit most often say it’s because of tensions between work and family, lack of employer flexibility and difficult supervisors. But by finding a way for people to do their job working from home and lower their stress, companies can keep valued, experienced people on the payroll.

Employers who oppose work-at-home arrangements often claim productivity will decrease, but the contrary is true. People who work at home are actually more productive. The researcher clearly contradicts the concern that not being seen in the office is career limiting. In fact, participants in the studies did not consider their work arrangement a liability, ands reported that working from home work may actually help advance their careers.

Work at home, home business, and freelance job news for the week ending March 3, 2008.

The problem with rural Britain BBC News, UK - March 3, 2008 The social implications of telecommuting could also be dramatic. If more people stay in rural areas during the day, rather than traveling into town for …

Striking A Balance Worcester Business Journal, MA - March 3, 2008 Qualifying employees can tweak their work schedules by taking extended lunches, telecommuting or compressing their work weeks. And as Hirsch noted, …

First woman managing partner at Ernst & Young’s local office knows … Pittsburgh Post Gazette, PA - Mar 1, 2008 And I telecommute from home a lot. I typically go home at 6 pm and I’ll be with my family until they go to bed at 8:30 pm And then I’ll get online at 9 pm …

You know it’s time to consider working from home or telecommuting when you feel like this guy.

Nobody ever died wishing they’d spent more time at the office.