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As featured Monday night on ABC 7 News, Sun released the findings of an internal study it undertook to monitor the energy usage of more than 100 of the 19,000 participants in Sun’s Open Work flexible work program. Almost 10 years ago, Sun realized that the network would fundamentally change the way we work. At Sun, the Network is the both the Computer and the Office, with more than 56 percent of our workforce working wherever they need or want to be with Open Work, our flexible work program. Sun discovered that by being unbound to an single office and schedule, Open Workers are actually more productive, and tend to put as much as 60 percent of the time they saved by not commuting toward their careers.

Sun’s sustainable computing team created the Open Work Energy Measurement Project to compare home and work energy use in order to determine if Open Work really saves energy, or just transfers the energy cost and load to the employee. Sun found that by eliminating commuting just 2.5 days per week, an employee reduces energy used for work by the equivalent of 5,400 Kilowatt hours/year. Commuting was more than 98 percent of each employee's carbon footprint for work, compared to less than 1.7 percent of total carbon emissions to power office equipment.  Sometimes the most effective way to reduce one’s carbon footprint is to simply stay home!

On a related note, Reuters recently reported on a survey of 1,500 U.S. technology workers that found more than a third would accept pay cuts of up to 10 percent to work from home and avoid the expense of commuting to the office. Sun’s flexible work program is a great lure for tech workers tired of the commute, florescent lighting or chilly AC, but not the discount-rated ones, just the best!