Target V: Professional Travel

Status updates

2020-2025 wrap-up report

Progress:

• Included professional travel (air travel) for the first time in the 2022 GHG Inventory, establishing a baseline.
• Formed a Professional Travel Emission Policy Committee with strong faculty leadership.
• Developed a resolution calling for the UW to address greenhouse emissions from air travel, which was voted on at the Faculty Senate.

By-the-Numbers: In 2022, professional air travel accounted for 6.29% of UW’s total emissions, or roughly 33,000 metric tons CO₂e. This level represented a 47.7% reduction from 2019 due to pandemic-related travel restrictions. 

Status: Not achieved. UW now has the data and governance structure needed to address air travel emissions, however the Faculty Senate voted not to pass the proposed resolution to address emissions from UW sponsored air travel.

Fiscal Year 2024 progress

The University of Washington is taking steps to create a program to reduce emissions from air travel and mitigate its environmental impact. The Environmental Stewardship Committee (ESC) and the Sustainability Action Plan Executive Committee (EC) recognize the need for an ambitious long-term approach to consistently reduce air travel emissions.

To address this target, UW formed an ad hoc joint committee in 2019 consisting of members from the ESC and the Faculty Council on Campus Planning and Stewardship. The group began by gathering information about the environmental and public health impact of air travel, reading the published literature about the culture of academic air travel, compiling UW air travel data, exploring the efficacy of carbon offsets, and learning about air travel reduction efforts at other universities. In 2022 the group expanded to include representatives from UW Medicine and Intercollegiate Athletics and began to report to the Faculty Council on Campus Planning and Stewardship as well as the ESC. The group also began engaging more broadly with the UW community through focus groups and two webinars to discuss the environmental and social impacts of UW’s air travel, as well as potential policies and actions to reduce UW’s impact.

Over the past two years, the University’s Professional Travel Emission Policy Committee has collaborated with the ESC to develop recommendations for a new UW-wide air travel emissions reduction program. The proposal was presented to President Ana Mari Cauce who gave preliminary approval and expressed a desire to have this work led by UW faculty. With input from the Faculty Council on Campus Planning and Stewardship (FCCPS), the group drafted a Class C Resolution for the Faculty Senate. This draft will be further refined and brought forward by the Faculty Council on Campus Planning and Stewardship for consideration by the Faculty Senate in 2024-2025.

The committee’s proposal highlights the impact of air travel on the global climate crisis and outlines two primary goals: Reduce emission from air travel, and mitigate for UW emissions from air travel.

Fiscal Year 2023 progress

Target Actions for 2023

• Continue work on programs to offset travel emissions

The Professional Travel Working Group created a joint ad-hoc committee with the Faculty Council on Campus Planning and Stewardship to explore possible strategies to reduce air travel across the UW. This group presented a package of recommendations to the Sustainability Action Plan Executive Committee and Environmental Stewardship Committee (ESC), and continued discussions with UW stakeholders. The ad-hoc committee’s work has gained endorsement from the ESC and Faculty Senate, showing broad consensus to continue toward a draft policy.

UW Sustainability also worked with the consultants for the Greenhouse Gas inventory report to look at ways to automate data processing and create a database for UW’s professional travel.

Fiscal Year 2022 progress

• Whole U and UW Sustainability collaborate to expand university-wide equitable engagement
• Expand professional development opportunities for faculty and staff
• Inventory and expand community engagement

Much of the work under this target has focused on organizing and promoting sustainability events, providing opportunities for the UW community to enable new learning and engagement around topics in-depth or at an introductory level, and promote crossdisciplinary collaborations between different units.

The engagement working group organized several events throughout the year to facilitate this engagement, including a Tri-Campus Food Systems event in the Fall and a Food Systems Conversation Series in the Spring. UW Sustainability also welcomed a return to in-person events with a Sustainability Fair in the Fall - inviting academic departments, operational groups and student organizations to table and provide information on sustainability efforts - and Earth Day events in the Spring. There are also hundreds of events hosted by different groups across the UW every year, including academic seminars and lectures, volunteer work parties and student-led events. Annual offerings include the School of Environmental & Forest Sciences’ Sustaining Our World Lecture, the Student Food Cooperative’s Humble Feasts, the Foster School’s Environmental Innovation Practicum, the American Indian Studies Department’s Living Breath of wǝɫǝbʔaltx: Indigenous Foods and Ecological Knowledge symposium, and many more from a wide variety of disciplines.

While events play an important role in community engagement, events are a small part of the larger sustainability picture, and generally only reach a small percentage of the UW community. This target will be re-evaluated to address quality of engagement rather than only quantity, as high-quality engagement with fewer people can be equally if not more impactful. We also want to better identify the desired outcomes from an engagement target, and how equity can be better centered in our collective sustainability engagement work. Finally, if the updated Plan includes a measurable target for engagement, we will need to ensure the target can be measured over a baseline.