Reducing air travel

Maintaining our current level of flying is not in alignment with the necessary emission reductions for staying below 1.5 degrees or even 2 degrees of global warming. The UW, like universities across the world is grappling with how to address the impact of the flying to conduct field research, develop relationships with colleagues, compete in athletic events, and provide students with enriching experiences of place and culture.

An ad hoc committee composed of representatives from the Environmental Stewardship Committee (ESC), the Faculty Council on Campus Planning and Stewardship (FCCPS), and UW Sustainability.

We are developing a toolkit of resources to support individuals and groups who would like to bring this conversation to their department or unit. This toolkit will eventually be available on this website. Please reach out to Marilyn Ostergren, ostergrn@uw.edu, if you are interested.

The focus is on flights paid for by the University. This includes professional and research travel by UW faculty paid for through grants, staff travel to undertake the work of the university, athletics travel, and travel paid for by the UW to bring others to the university for presentations, trainings, recruitment etc.

We need to ensure that any program or policy we put in place will reduce rather than increase inequity. We realize that travel opportunities can have an impact on career trajectories, particularly for graduate students and newer faculty. We also recognize that those who have visa restrictions, medical issues, disabling conditions or caregiving needs that prohibit them from flying or make it prohibitively expensive can be left out; there is evidence that virtual conference are attended by a more diverse audience than in-person conferences.

Working in partnership: Engaging in the conversation with peers to create change across academic institutions.

Being Innovative: Using our creative and intellectual capacity to envision and create alternatives to flying that are better in every respect.

Being Leaders: Act with courage to take a stance and make bold moves for others to follow.

Technology support: Support videoconferencing and non-travel alternatives.

Institutional support: Set ambitious goals for flying reductions in line with the most current climate science (e.g. the latest IPCC Report). Assist units in developing plans to implement the Sustainable Connections Program and achieve program goals. 

Engagement: Integrate flying reduction goals and best practices in university plans and practices.

Education: Communicate the impacts of flying. Establish an organization-wide process to track air travel data. Monitor and report annually on progress in meeting program goals. 

Innovation: Find and share examples of impactful, successful alternatives to flying.

Internal Mitigation: Establish an Air Travel Mitigation Fund and create a monetary mechanism that provides a nexus to the pollution resulting from UW-sponsored air travel. This mechanism can incentivize alternatives to air travel, and pay for direct emissions.

In the summer of 2023, the air travel emission reduction committee conducted focus groups to hear ideas and concerns from the UW community. These focus groups included staff and faculty from Athletics, the College of the Environment, UW Medicine and Equity practitioners.

Many universities are looking at ways to reduce air travel or mitigate its impacts. The below link goes to a crowd-sourced map showing some of these efforts.

see the map

• UW Sustainability's Marilyn Ostergren presented on UW's Air Travel efforts during the 2024 Washington & Oregon Higher Education Sustainability Conference (WOHESC). See the presentation slides.
• The FlyingLess project has an excellent “toolbox” of ideas and strategies for reducing flying in academia: flyingless.de
• The No Fly Climate Sci is a website maintained by Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist. It includes a long list of links to resources and biographies of individuals who are working to reduce their emissions: noflyclimatesci.org/resources
• The Stay Grounded website has excellent graphics and data for communicating the impact of flying: stay-grounded.org/get-information
• This document from Stanford describes their methodology for calculating emissions from air travel and other forms of travel: Scope 3 emissions from Business Travel (Stanford Scope 3 emissions program)
• Webinar on reducing air travel emissions from 4 swiss universities that are undergoing this effort: youtube.com/watch?v=riktS_7_eIM
• Görlinger, Susann, et al. "An evidence-based approach to accelerate flight reduction in academia." npj Climate Action 2.1 (2023): 41