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Today, I work for a publication that doesn’t even have an office (well, unless you count the Ars Technica Orbiting HQ). My friends and family who work in offices are often able to work remotely if they need to every once in a while. In fact, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) notes that in 2016, 22 percent of employed Americans did some or all of their work at home. Although there are good things and bad things about this new reality (who among us hasn’t checked work email right before going to bed), all those hours not spent getting to and from offices is adding up.

According to researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, a difference is noticeable as recently as this decade. In a paper published in Joule, the researchers compared data from 2003 and 2012 gleaned from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which is conducted by the BLS. They then tried to estimate how time spent in different buildings and vehicles translated to energy use based on average residential, commercial, and transportation energy use figures from both years.