Cisco and VMware both embrace hybrid-work models, but they present diverging ideas on how much an increasingly remote workforce impacts a company's overall carbon emissions.

Mary de Wysocki, Cisco VP of corporate social responsibility and sustainability told SDxCentral in an earlier interview that hybrid work is one piece of the networking giant's strategy to reach net-zero across all three scopes of emissions by 2040.

Employees working from home don't commute to an office, which helps companies lower scope 3 emissions. Remote or hybrid work models also eliminate the need to power as many office buildings, thus chipping away at a company's scope 2 emissions, de Wysocki explained.

Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions declined 8.8% in the first six months of 2020 compared to the first six months of 2019, according to a recent study exploring the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on CO2 emissions. This represents a significant drop caused by the pandemic’s impact on human activity, including air travel, holiday celebrations, and daily commutes.

"I think there is this expectation that companies' scope three emissions would be reduced as a result [of the pandemic and remote work], which is true," Nicola Acutt, VMware VP of environmental, social, and governance (ESG), told SDxCentral, adding that VMware saw that trend in its 2020 data.

But remote employees are still working. They're still using energy to power their home offices. And they're still racking up emissions — just not on company-owned property.

With this in mind, VMware has also mulled over the environmental impacts of remote work from what it calls a "thought leadership perspective" by measuring and reporting on the carbon emissions of remote employees' home offices.

According to VMware's study, home office emissions in FY21 were about 0.47 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MT CO2e) per employee, with computer and monitor use contributing most to this figure. In addition to IT assets, the vendor's methodology also measures remote employees' lighting, space heating, and space cooling.

Home office emissions rise as the environmental impact of employee commuting dwindles, and the net impact of those two categories should be integrated into corporate carbon reporting, the report explains.

The future of work continues to shift toward remote models, meaning the energy footprint associated with home offices falls within that company's environmental impact. "In this hybrid world, we're going to need to expand the definition [and] the boundary of responsibility for emissions in a hybrid work environment," Acutt said.

VMware estimates the carbon impact of a totally remote workforce to be 2.5 times smaller than its pre-pandemic impact. But the virtualization giant isn't relying on a lack of commuting alone to keep its scope three numbers down.

Through partnerships with Common Energy and SunPower, VMware provides remote employees in the U.S. with clean-energy options for their homes. Another initiative launched by a VMware employee-led sustainability program aims to get remote employees involved with local organizations that promote individual sustainability through zero-waste products, clean energy, and other sustainably-minded services.