Every year, in connection with its annual report, the University submits a report on our environmental management work to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, which coordinates the state’s environmental management work. The report, which has now been approved and published includes, among other things, statistics for our business travel from our procured travel agency.
Emissions from business travel in CO2e
The report states that emissions from air travel in 2024 declined by 6% on the previous year. The total distance travelled and costs have also decreased. In a comparison with air travel before the pandemic, the reduction is even larger. During the same period, the number of staff, measured as full-time equivalents, has increased by 5.5% from 7,055 in 2019 to 7,445 in 2024. Thus, even though there are more employees, travel has been reduced overall.
“It is pleasing that emissions from the University’s business travel via air have decreased. Most business trips can be done by train, for example rail travel is now used for trips to Stockholm. There are also quite a few meetings and conferences for which online participation is now the only option. As an international university, we will also continue to fly, but we can still reduce the emissions from our flights without it affecting our operations negatively,” says Per Mickwitz pro vice-chancellor for sustainability.
Emissions from travel, accommodation and conferences account for about 6% of the University’s total climate impact, according to our latest climate spend analysis. It provides a rough estimate of the carbon footprint, and is mainly used to see which purchasing categories have the largest footprint. A climate spend analysis is a calculation of climate impact, based on all our purchases.
Emissions per SEK are based on the indicators from the National Agency for Public Procurement for each purchasing category.
Travel habits survey generated improvement suggestions
The responses to the travel habits survey conducted in autumn 2024 contained suggestions to further reduce emissions from travel. The initiatives most staff members suggested to enable them to travel less often or more sustainability on business are:
- Easier booking and payment of bus and rail travel (33% of those who answered the question)
- Better information on expectations regarding business travel (12%)
- Better options for online meetings (11%)
Interest in Sustainable alternatives
The comments section also contained many requests for an updated travel policy that clarifies the rules for business travel. About twenty per cent of the travel habits survey respondents were not aware of the University’s travel guidelines for business trips and a further thirty per cent answered that they did not get sufficiently good support from the guidelines to be able to choose sustainable travel.
- Report on Lund University's environmental management work 2024 (in Swedish) read page 12 onwards.
- Sustainable at work
- In-depth report on employees' commutes to Lund