Working From Home Will Drive Up Electricity Bills for Consumers

working from home

subscribe

TORONTO -

Household electricity bills are set to soar, thanks to the millions of people now working at home to avoid catching the coronavirus.

Running laptops and other home appliances will cost consumers an extra 52 million pounds ($60 million) each week in the U.K., according to a study from Uswitch, a website that helps consumers compare the energy prices that utilities charge.

For each home-bound household, the pain to the pocketbook may be about 195 pounds per year extra.

The rise in price for households comes even as overall demand is falling rapidly in Europe, with wide swaths of the economy shut down to keep workers from gathering in one place.

People stuck at home will plug in computers, lights and appliances when they’d normally be at the office, increasing their consumption.

With the Canadian government declaring a state of emergency due to the coronavirus, companies are enabling work-from-home structures to keep business running and help employees follow social distancing guidelines. However, working remotely has been on the rise for a while.

“The coronavirus is going to be a tipping point. We plodded along at about 10% growth a year for the last 10 years, but I foresee that this is going to really accelerate the trend,” Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics.

Gallup’s State of the Workplace 2017 study found that 43% of employees work remotely with some frequency. Research indicates that in a five-day workweek, working remotely for two to three days is the most productive. That gives the employee two to three days of meetings, collaboration and interaction, with the opportunity to just focus on the work for the other half of the week.

Remote work seems like a logical precaution for many companies that employ people in the digital economy. However, not all Americans have access to the internet at home, and many work in industries that require in-person work.

According to the Pew Research Center, roughly three-quarters of American adults have broadband internet service at home. However, the study found that racial minorities, older adults, rural residents and people with lower levels of education and income are less likely to have broadband service at home. In addition, 1 in 5 American adults access the internet only through their smartphone and do not have traditional broadband access. 

Full-time employees are four times more likely to have remote work options than part-time employees. A typical remote worker is college-educated, at least 45 years old and earns an annual salary of $58,000 while working for a company with more than 100 employees, according to Global Workplace Analytics. 

New York, California and other states have enacted strict policies for people to remain at home during the coronavirus pandemic, which could change the future of work.

“I don’t think we’ll go back to the same way we used to operate,” Jennifer Christie, chief HR officer at Twitter, told CNBC. “I really don’t.”

Related News

bucket truck workers

Texas utilities struggle to restore power as Harvey hampers progress

HOUSTON - Hundreds of thousands of Texans were without power along the Gulf Coast as Tropical Storm Harvey left parts of the Houston area under water.

There were roughly 280,000 customers without power along the Texas's coast and in Houston and the surrounding areas on Monday, according to reported outages by the state's investor-owned utilities. Harvey, which made landfall on Friday, caused devastating flooding and knocked out power lines along its destructive path.

CenterPoint Energy reported more than 100,000 outages earlier on Monday, though that figure was down to 91,744 shortly after 1 p.m. on Monday.

The company said it was unable to access…

READ MORE
powerlines

Report call for major changes to operation of Nova Scotia's power grid

READ MORE

Clean-energy generation powers economy, environment

READ MORE

byron_unit_2_nuclear

Hitachi freezes British nuclear project, books $2.8bn hit

READ MORE

In North Carolina, unpaid electric and water bills are driving families and cities to the financial brink

READ MORE