Corporate climate targets have moved from a voluntary gesture to a baseline expectation. In KPMG’s 2024 Survey of Sustainability Reporting, 95% of the world’s 250 largest companies now publish carbon reduction targets, up from 80% two years earlier. Setting the target is the easy part. Hitting it means cutting emissions that sit outside a company’s own walls, in the value chain that carbon accounting calls Scope 3.

That is where the real weight sits. Analysis from CDP and Boston Consulting Group found that a company’s Scope 3 supply chain emissions are, on average, 26 times greater than the emissions from its direct operations. Scope 3 spans the entire value chain, and one part of it is unusually within a company’s control: how and where its people work. Hiring remote talent, especially hiring in Brazil, Costa Rica, or other countries in Latin America, is one of the clearest levers, and widely underused.

Commuting Is a Bigger Line Item Than It Looks

The daily commute is one of the few Scope 3 sources a company can influence directly. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the US, at 28% of the national total, and passenger vehicles do most of that work. The EPA puts the average passenger vehicle at about 4.6 metric tons of CO2 a year. Spread a share of that across a workforce driving to an office five days a week, and commuting becomes a measurable part of a company’s footprint.

It is also a reportable one. Under the GHG Protocol, employee commuting is a defined Scope 3 category (Category 7), so reductions can be counted and disclosed rather than just felt. A distributed team removes the commute for roles that never needed to be in a building, and that reduction shows up in the numbers a company reports.

Remote Work Is Not Automatically Greener

Working from home is not zero-carbon, and the size of the benefit depends on how the work is designed. A 2023 study from researchers at Cornell University and Microsoft, published in PNAS, found that fully remote workers can have a carbon footprint up to 54% lower than their onsite counterparts. The same study found that hybrid workers who are remote just one day a week cut their footprint by only about 2%, once home energy use and added non-commute travel are counted.

The reductions are real, but they depend on the design. Two to four remote days a week delivered reductions of 11% to 29% in the study, and practices like desk sharing pushed the figure higher. Companies that treat distributed work as a policy, with genuine remote roles rather than a token day at home, are the ones whose footprint moves.

The Office Footprint Is the Larger Prize

The commute gets the attention, but the building is often the bigger source of savings. A Carbon Trust study of homeworking across Europe found that avoided office energy, the heating, cooling, and lighting of a workplace, was a larger driver of emissions savings than the avoided commute itself. Buildings carry a heavy load on any grid; the IEA attributes roughly 26% of global energy-related CO2 emissions to building operations.

A distributed team lets a company carry less of that load, and many have already started shrinking their office space since 2020, as commercial real estate firm CBRE has tracked. Less leased space means lower Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions from a company’s own operations, the part of the inventory it controls most directly. The caveat, again from the Carbon Trust, is seasonality: sending people home to heat energy-inefficient houses in winter can erode the savings, so the gains are strongest where office space is genuinely reduced rather than left sitting empty.

Where People Work Changes the Grid Behind the Work

Because a remote worker’s footprint depends partly on the electricity powering their home, geography matters. A team member working on a cleaner grid carries a lighter home-energy footprint for the same hours worked, which softens the exact rebound the Cornell study warns about.

Several major Latin American economies run notably cleaner electricity grids than the global average. Brazil generated 88% of its electricity from renewable sources in 2024, mostly hydro, and Costa Rica runs its national grid at close to 99% renewable. US companies already hire remote talent in Latin America for overlapping working hours and, by most third-party estimates, comparable roles at 40% to 70% lower cost to hire; the cleaner grid means much of that work also carries a lighter energy footprint than the same hours worked in the US.

Making the Reduction Count

None of this lands in an ESG report on its own. To claim it, a company has to measure it: commuting under Scope 3 Category 7, office energy under Scopes 1 and 2, and a clear policy defining what distributed means in practice. Set minimum remote days, right-size the real estate to match, and state home-energy assumptions honestly. Done that way, distributed work stops being a perk and becomes a line a company can point to when it reports against its targets.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does remote work really cut a company’s carbon footprint?

It can, but not automatically. Fully remote and multi-day hybrid arrangements show meaningful reductions in peer-reviewed research, while a single remote day a week barely registers once home energy and extra travel are counted. The benefit scales with how genuinely the work is distributed.

What counts toward carbon reporting?

Two things carry into carbon accounting. Employee commuting sits in Scope 3, Category 7 under the GHG Protocol, and reduced office space lowers the Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions from a company’s own operations. Both can be measured and disclosed.

Does hiring internationally help or hurt the footprint?

It depends on the local grid. Team members working in regions with cleaner electricity, such as when you hire in Brazil or Costa Rica, carry a lighter home-energy footprint than those on more fossil-heavy grids, which can improve the overall picture rather than complicate it.