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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- While workers often consider telecommuting a welcome convenience, the National Environmental Policy Institute plans to extend that benefit to the environment by offering financial incentives.

A pilot program announced this week offers a financial incentive to companies that let employees work at home at least one day a week. The Environmental Protection Agency supports the effort and helps fund it.

"Reducing the amount of time workers spend in traffic is a tangible way that each and every one of us can help to improve our environment," says Christie Todd Whitman, EPA Administrator. "It's good for our communities and good for our quality of life."

Using software from Teletrips.com, companies can track the amount of car emissions avoided by employees staying at home. Based on this amount, the National Environmental Policy Institute will award companies a transferable credit. Companies can sell the credits to manufacturers or utilities in the same region, which can use the credits if their plants approach the maximum amount of emissions allowed by the EPA. The National Environmental Policy Institute set the emissions standards and helped create the program.

The program is starting in May in Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, and Denver.

Yeah, But Is the Air Cleaner?

While few disagree with the convenience of e-commuting, the program's benefit to the environment is not as clear.

"It's fine to promote telecommuting," says Ann Mesnikoff of the Sierra Club. "But if you are going to sell [your credit] so someone else can pollute, it doesn't help the problem."

Measuring emissions for the program assumes telecommuters don't use their cars at all, says Joe Goffman, a senior attorney at the Environmental Defense. A company may get credit for the miles an employee didn't travel to work, even though that employee drives to lunch or runs errands during the workday, he says.

Nortel Networks is one of the program's first participants. One of every four Nortel employees telecommutes during part of the week, says Greg Farmer of Nortel. Telecommuters are more productive because they have the freedom to manage their workday around other responsibilities, Farmer says.

Telecommuting Grows

With today's technology, employees don't need to come to the office to communicate with each other, notes Barry Rogstad, president of American Business Conference. "Sometimes in an office the only time people see each other is when they go to lunch," he says.

The number of telecommuters nationwide has increased from 4 million in 1990 to 23.6 million today, according to the International Telework Association & Council.

Whether the program will boost those numbers depends on whether employers find emissions-credit trading financially beneficial, Rogstad says. Companies will receive credit only for the increase in telecommuters after they have signed up for the program, according to the National Environmental Policy Institute.

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