Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Can change in broking house working hours create emissions?

Can broking house trading create environmental emissions? This thought was coming as a wave early in the morning in auto while I was going to office. Like a law of association, the thought came. While travelling in the morning, I was seeing some smoke coming out of the auto. Then at the same time was reading an article on the changed office timings in National Stock Exchange (NSE), Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Immediately a question appeared on mind. What environmental costs and benefits could be created if the working hours in NSE and BSE is extended by 1 hour. A shift in office hours from 9 a.m in BSE, NSE in Mumbai could mean that people working in these offices might have to start from their home atleast 1 hour earlier. This would also depend on the distance between the home of the NSE, BSE employees and office. Assuming most of this NSE, BSE employees in Mumbai travel in local train and avoid the road traffic, will this change in the office timing create a larger rush in the local train during the early morning. Will this change in the office timing shift some people towards using local train early in the morning instead of driving. That shift could reduce the daily total emissions from cars in the city. But if the people switching to local train are the ones who in any ways use train for commuting (in the earlier working hour schedule), then it wont change the daily emissions from cars and it would stick to the baseline value of emissions. Will the change in the office timing change the lifestyle habits and push people who earlier used to commute by driving in their own cars towards car pooling in the morning as they wont like to drive everyday in the morning. Car pooling could reduce the total emissions in the city as some users of car would go down each day. What effect this change in office timing could have in the lifestyle habits of the people. Will this mean that some of the office goers who used to drop their kids in school on way to office has to rely on alternative means of transport for arranging the commuting of their kids from home to school. If they keep some private cars (that run on fossil fuels or blended fossil fuels) on rent now to arrange the dropping of the kids in their school then that would again create a new emission source. Will the new working hours from 9 a.m. add to the stress levels of the employees of NSE, BSE. and would push them towards driving cars (using fossil fuels) as a stress buster or reduce the use of cars (to avoid additional stress)? Will public transport be increased during the new time to accomodate the traffic load that would be shifted in the morning due to opening of BSE, NSE from 9 a.m.

Another question that needs to be answered is if public transport in the new working hours is increased and they run on blended clean fuel then how much increase in the emissions take place? However if the entire traffic shifts to using train due to change in office timing the emissions wont increase. But if they shift towards using individual cars (using fossil fuels) in the morning hours due to change in office timing then the emissions would increase. Thus emissions could increase or decrease based on how lifestyle behaviour of employees of NSE, BSE changes due to change in office timing that finally affects the use of cars from where emissions happen (assuming that no car entirely runs on altogether clean fuel so there is some amount of emission from any car).

Hence change in the timing of broking house working hours could increase/decrease emissions based on how lifestyle behaviour pattern of the people (whose office working hours change) respond to the change in the office working hours. May be a calculation of the change in the emissions owing to change in the lifestyle behaviour of each of the working officials of NSE, BSE whose office working hours change could be a way forward research for future.

Anando

1 comment:

  1. Hi Anando,
    Nice idea, nice blog.
    Have a few suggestions, though. Please consider breaking a long paragraph into two or three smaller paragraphs instead. That, i guess, will serve two purposes. one, it will make reading easier. two, it will inrich the drama underlying your thought process.

    a quick comment on this post: if office timing, in mumbai, particularly, is designed in a way that some offices start at 8 in the morning, some at 9, some at 10 and so on, say upto 1 in the afternoon, would it reduce pollution? trains will be easier to commute on, roads will be far less crowded, probably one of the parents will manage to drop kids in the school and the other can pick them up.... just think over...

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