Annual follow-up of environmental objectives – 2022

So, where are we today? The annual follow-up of our environmental objectives has been concluded, and for several objectives, things are looking good.

Energy consumption

Our objective is that by 2027, 50% of electricity consumed will come from renewable sources. This applies to all properties managed by SLU. At the end of 2022, this figure was 48%. Another objective is to produce 95% of the energy used for heating, and here we reached 102%.
In the buildings we rent from Akademiska hus, energy consumption went up 4% compared to 2019, however, energy consumption in properties we manage ourselves dropped in 2022.

Business travel

By 2025, SLU will have reduced fossil fuel emissions from air travel by 60%, compared to 2019. At the end of 2022, emissions had already dropped by 14% per full-time employee.

Environmental considerations in purchasing

An environmental risk assessment has been performed for all procurements that resulted in a signed agreement in 2022; in 13 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. In 2022, these were fruit baskets, workwear and catering in Alnarp. One of the objectives in this field is to increase the number of nights at hotels with environmental/green certification. In 2022, just over a third of hotel nights were booked at hotels with environmental certification. 

Incorporating sustainability in teaching

All three interim objectives were fulfilled. The question in course evaluations on whether sustainability has been incorporated in teaching got an average rating of 4.18 out of 5.

Environmental assessment

The objective that 90% of participants in SLU’s quality enhancement activities publish their data as open data was not fulfilled. At the end of 2022, 33% of participants published open data; however, as an action plan has now been approved, we expect the objective to be reached as planned.