Following a peak in business travel after the Covid period, the UG now seems on track to meet its 2026 target of reducing CO₂ emissions from flights.
The Green Office did a study on air travel at the UG. In 2024, staff flew a combined total of 17 million kilometres – equivalent to circling the globe 426 times.
The average distance flown per person was 3,438 kilometres, a decrease of 33.7 percent compared to 2023. Across the university, the most frequently visited countries were Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
CO₂ neutral
The university’s main motivation for reducing air travel is to lower its CO₂ emissions. The bigger goal is to become a CO₂-neutral university by 2035.
To this end, the UG launched its Sustainability Roadmap in 2021 – a framework of goals and ambitions to be achieved by 2026. One of these is a 30-percent reduction in flight-related emissions compared to 2019 levels.
The university is not there yet, but the 2024 results show positive progress. Compared to 2023 – a peak year – the UG reduced emissions by 34.5 percent, as illustrated below by a Green Office graph.
Limiting travel
To reduce business travel, the UG introduced new policies back in 2019: destinations reachable by train in under six hours were no longer eligible for air travel. Flying was also prohibited for journeys shorter than 500 kilometres.
These rules were tightened further on 1 January, 2023: flying is now banned if the train journey takes less than nine hours or if the distance travelled is under 800 kilometres.
In addition, from 2024 onwards, each faculty and department has been assigned a CO₂ limit – a maximum amount of CO₂ they may emit, used to determine how many flights can still be taken for work. This limit will be reduced by 11 percent each year in order to meet the 2026 target.