Remote work during coronavirus crisis could help Monterey County achieve climate goals.

One thing coronavirus might be good for is Monterey County’s plan to reduce its impact on the climate crisis.

Two weeks into the shelter-in-place order, county officials see a useful experiment in the fact that many of the county’s 5,359 employees are suddenly working from home instead of commuting into the office every day.

“We are proving that telecommuting is achievable now, [that it’s] a technically feasible option for employees,” county Sustainability Program Manager Ashley Paulsworth said at a meeting of the Board of Supervisors’ Alternative Energy & the Environment Committee on March 27.

The committee was convened for the first time since October, with supervisors Jane Parker and Chris Lopez participating via video.

“Working in the time of Covid-19 is giving us an opportunity to get a feel for how to work remotely or conduct meetings remotely,” Parker said.

“We are proving that telecommuting is achievable now.”

Lopez, who pointed out that he drives an electric car, asked county staff to survey county departments on how many workers are telecommuting during the coronavirus crisis and calculate the resulting savings in carbon emissions.

In recent years, exhaust pipe emissions from employees driving to and from work has become the county government’s leading source of greenhouse gases, according to Paulsworth’s presentation to the committee.

County leadership began tackling its impact on climate change in 2005 with a set of targets. The goal was to bring its emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 – and that goal appears to have been achieved. Most of the drop came from a switch to carbon-free sources of electricity for county buildings and facilities with the rise of Monterey Bay Community Power. (Founded in 2017, MBCP is a public agency that buys hydro, solar, wind power on behalf of five Central Coast counties.)

In addition to the power it gets from the grid, Monterey County also managed to make its water treatment facilities, street lights and vehicle fleet run cleaner.

But when it came to commuting, emissions didn’t drop at all – rather, they went up. Instead of the 4-percent drop anticipated, the emissions increased by 10 percent over the past 15 years. One reason is the number of employees has increased.

If the county is going to meet its 2030 goals – nearly 50-percent fewer emissions than today – commuting will have to be reduced. Paulsworth recommended that about one-third of county employees work remotely for two days a week.

“It seems achievable,” Parker said. “It’s not like we’re going to have to do things that are completely drastic.”