Annual follow-up of environmental objectives – 2022

SLU has environmental objectives in the areas of energy consumption, business travel, purchasing, education and environmental monitoring and assessment. We also have the vision to be a climate-neutral university by 2027.

Business travel

By 2025, SLU will have reduced fossil fuel emissions from air travel by 60 per cent, compared to 2019. At the end of the first semester of 2022, SLU had reduced fossil emissions from air travel by 45 per cent per full-time equivalent (FTE) compared to the first semester of 2019. This can be compared to the first semester of 2021; during the pandemic emissions from air travel shrunk by 97 per cent per full-time equivalent compared to 2019.

Purchasing

An environmental risk assessment has been performed for all procurements that resulted in a signed agreement by the end of the first semester of 2022; in four of these cases, the analysis resulted in the introduction of environmental requirements. Every year, a follow-up is done on three procurements to ensure that the environmental requirements have been fulfilled. So far, one supplier has provided evidence of this.

One of the objectives in this field is to increase the number of hotel nights at hotels with environmental certification. In the first six months of 2022, around half of the hotel nights at the top 20 hotels booked by SLU were at a hotel with environmental certification. This is an increase compared to 2021 when 32 per cent of all hotel nights that year were booked at hotels with environmental certification. The booking system has information on which procured hotels have a certificate. 

Environmental assessment

The objective that 90 per cent of participants in SLU’s quality enhancement activities publish their data as open data was not fulfilled. At the end of the first semester of 2022, 24 per cent of participants published open data; an action plan has now been approved meaning the objective is expected to be reached as planned.