October 31, 2023
Thanks to the colleagues who rose to the challenge and gave us something to be proud of – now we can build on our result
Our University has limited its annual emissions from air travel to almost half of our 2018/19 level (pre-Covid-19 pandemic) in its first year of a new travel policy.
Our emissions for the academic year 2022-23 were just over 10,000 tonnes CO2e – this is 54% of those for 2018-19, which were 18,641 tonnes CO2e. Despite missing the target, we still saved the same amount of carbon as driving more than 32.5 million kilometers in the average petrol car or more than 3000 return flights between Manchester and New York.
Last year we did changes to the travel policy to support our ambition to be a leader in the development of sustainable research and teaching practices, as part of our Environmental sustainability strategy.
It is important that we all change our behavior as part of the global need to address climate change. The travel policy change is part of a wider project to reduce our total carbon footprint, not just from our business travel, but also our buildings, fleet vehicles, what we buy and the our investments.
Vice President for Social Responsibility, Professor Nalin Thakkar said: “We have made a big difference and I am so proud of the colleagues who rose to the challenge and found greener ways of working. This proves that we are determined to face the greatest challenge of humanity, climate change.
“We will continue to target our travel for work, a proven strategy of success, to reach or even beat our goal next year.
“If we develop even more sustainable research and teaching practices, we will become a leader in the sector and part of the global community tackling climate change and protecting the earth for future generations.”
Support and guidance
We provide guidance and a range of support to those of you who are affected by the policy change, including a ‘top-up fund’ to cover additional costs. Please visit:
Our travel FAQs solve the problems you may have when trying to reduce your air travel:
You can also get ideas about greener ways of working from our case studies of colleagues:
