Telecommuting and environmental policy: Lessons from the ecommute program

In 1999 the National Air Quality and Telecommuting Act established pilot telecommuting programs (ecommute) in five major US metropolitan areas. The major goal of the ecommute program was to examine whether a particular type of economic incentive, tradable emissions credits from telecommuting, represents a viable strategy for reducing vehicle miles traveled and improving air quality. A context is established for evaluating whether the envisioned trading scheme represents a feasible approach to reducing mobile source emissions and promoting telecommuting and a review of the limited experience with mobile source emissions trading programs is provided. Using two-and-one-half years of data collected in the ecommute program, telecommuting frequency, mode choice, and emissions reductions are examined. It is found that from a regulatory perspective, the most substantial drawback to such a program is its questionable environmental integrity, resulting from difficulties in designing sufficiently rigorous quantification protocols to accurately measure the emissions reductions from telecommuting. Such a program is not likely to be cost-effective because the emissions reductions from a single telecommuter are very small.