Follow-up of SLU’s 2020 environmental objectives

SLU has comprehensive environmental objectives for energy use, business travel, purchasing, education, and environmental monitoring and assessment. Furthermore, the university’s vision is to be climate neutral by 2027. The annual follow-up of the environmental objectives is now complete and we met several targets. 

Business travel

Since 2013, emissions generated by the university’s business travel have reduced by 75% per full-time equivalent. Emissions from domestic air travel alone have reduced by 83%. We had already met the business travel objectives in 2019 (before the pandemic), and the new objectives and action plan will be in place until 2025.

Sustainability perspective in courses and programmes

Four out of five interim education targets have been met. One such target that has been met is our course evaluations. When students are asked if sustainability has been successfully integrated into education, the average response is 4.09 points of a possible 5 points. New objectives have now been formulated for the 2021–2025 period.

Environmental considerations when purchasing

All three environmental objectives for purchasing were met last year. One objective involved increasing the number of environmentally certified hotels used in Sweden. 2020 saw the introduction of the possibility to use the booking system to see which hotels in the framework agreement are environmentally certified. 

Environmental monitoring and assessment

We did not meet the objective that at least 80% of all organisations that take part in SLU’s quality enhancement activities must make data public. This objective has now been extended until 2025 and has been increased to 90%.

Energy consumption

Neither of the two energy consumption objectives have been met. Since 2014, there has been a gradual increase in the use of electricity generated on site, however we fell short of the target of 13% by 2020, achieving only 9%. For the same period, we hoped to generate 90% of heating on site, however the final result was 84%. SLU also aimed to save 9% of energy per m² between 2012 and 2020, but here we achieved 7%. New objectives and action plans have been formulated and will apply until 2027.