WASHINGTON, D.C. — Virtual meetings and telecommuting may potentially trim billions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions without sacrificing worker productivity or quality of life, according to two new reports released today from World Wildlife Fund.

The IT solutions needed for both work activities already exist and may, if fully deployed, offer one relatively cheap way of addressing climate change. Employee travel can sometimes generate half of a non-manufacturing company's carbon footprint. Research suggests individual teleworkers may save as much as 23 kg of carbon dioxide emissions daily.

"Creating a global network of more than 4,000 high-quality videoconferencing studios in cities around the world would help build a new infrastructure for the 21st century and would cost less than one and half airplanes," Dennis Pamlin, the reports' co-author and WWF policy advisor, said in a statement.

The reports are the latest in a series of research studies that explore the ways in which technologies can be used to reduce emissions. For example, a 2008 report from the Climate Group and Boston Consulting Group found properly deployed information and communications technologies (ICT) could reduce emissions in the U.S. by 22 percent by 2020, and, although the industry's own footprint might double, it could help sectors cut as much as five times that amount.

The first of the two WWF reports, "Virtual Meetings and Climate Innovation in the 21st Century," finds the transition from travel to teleconferencing is taking place relatively slowly because of concern over the technology, weak vendor initiatives to drive large-scale deployment, and limited access to bandwidth, among other barriers.

Creating the infrastructure of one site per million urban dwellers would cost nearly a half billion dollars upfront, and about $347 million in annual operating costs, most of which would be offset by the savings from reduced travel.

The tools needed to more fully deploy teleworking are much less capital intensive, requiring a webcam-equipped laptop, mobile and wireless connectivity and secure software. The authors of "From Workplace to Anyplace" examines the environmental benefits of various teleworking adoption rates under four scenarios. The most aggressive scenario called "smart world" could avoid the emissions of a billion tons of greenhouse gases in 2030.

The report recommend IT companies use their own virtual meeting and teleworking technologies to demonstrate they believe in their own solutions.

That's already happening: Cisco, for example, tested its telecommuting technology called Virtual Office on more than 12,000 of its worldwide employees. The pilot reduced auto emissions by an estimated 30,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions and saved the company more than $168,000 that would have been spent on carbon offsets. It has reduced business travel 20 percent by increased use of its TelePresence teleconference technology.

Sun Microsystems allowed nearly 19,000 employees from around the world use its Open Work platform technologies suite. Working from home 2.5 days per week enabled employees to cut work-related energy consumption by 5,400 kilowatt hours annually.

"Cisco Telepresence" -- CC licensed by Flickr user mf_cailloux.