“We must take the climate challenge in the travel culture of academia very seriously”
Aarhus University's goal is to reduce the climate footprint of air travel by 30 per cent between 2018 and 2025. However, things are moving in the wrong direction. Professor Kari Tanderup has therefore taken matters into her own hands and cut back her air travel by 80 per cent. She now calls on the faculty management team to take action on the issue as well.
An academic conference in Hong Kong, an awards ceremony in Washington and a teaching session in Berlin. As a researcher, the entire world often becomes your workplace, and for many years, the norm for Kari Tanderup was to travel more than 10 times a year.
She’s been affiliated with Aarhus University Hospital and Aarhus University since 1998, and she is currently a professor at the Department of Clinical Medicine and the National Centre for Particle Radiotherapy at AUH. Reaching the top of the academic world has required an enormous number of flights across the globe, but not any more.
In recent years, Kari Tanderup has reduced her air travel activity by 80 per cent in order to minimize her CO2 footprint. She achieved this partly by travelling by train to most destinations in Europe and partly by using an online meeting platform when possible.
"I think my motivation to reduce my travel activities stems from a personal desire to care for our planet and from a sustainability focus that I’ve carried with me all my life," she explains.
Kari Tanderup has an interdisciplinary subject combination: an MSc in mathematics and physics, continuing education in medical physics and a PhD degree from Health at Aarhus University. As part of her work in the field between academia and clinical practice, Kari Tanderup spends a significant portion of her working hours in international networks and with international colleagues.
"For many years, I accepted being part of the 'travelling circus' that was traditionally associated with an international research career. It was extremely difficult to avoid it. I was probably one of the people at AU at the top of any travel statistics, and I’m certainly not proud of that,” she says.
Replaced the travelling circus with video meetings and longer travel days
Kari Tanderup therefore decided to change her behaviour.
"During the Covid-19 lockdown, many people became experienced with online meetings, so I seized the opportunity and started rearranging my travel activities to online alternatives. My colleagues now accept that I won't travel the world to meet up with them, and I also make sure that much of my international teaching is also available online," she says.
When travel cannot be avoided, using the train has become an integrated part of the work day for Kari Tanderup, who brings her office with her on the train. The climate footprint of travelling by train within Europe is typically more than 10 times smaller than travelling by plane.
“I try to avoid scheduling any meetings on travel days because I don’t always know what kind of internet connection I’ll have. Taking the train also has the added value that I can really focus on writing, for example, and I can avoid airports and security and having to transport myself from an airport and into the city. The train usually stops in the city centre and is often closer to my destination than the airport," she says.
Earlier this year, Kari Tanderup and a group of researchers travelled by train to the ESTRO2023 Conference in Vienna. Click here to read an article about the trip.
"Our trip to Vienna is a good example of a train journey to a destination we’d previously just hop on a flight to get to. The most important thing for us was to make the trip a shared experience, adding a social element to motivate the choice of the alternative mode of transport. However, booking train journeys across Europe takes a bit of getting used to," she says, and continues:
"If we’re going to change things, then we need more specific alternatives, and we need to become better at encouraging each other instead of shaming each other.”
Air travel can impede the university's climate plan
Aarhus University aims to reduce its overall CO2 emissions by 35 per cent in 2025 compared to 2018. The university also intends to reduce air travel activities by 30 per cent within the same time period. Both goals have been set in the university's climate strategy.
However, looking at the university's climate accounts for 2022, the amount of air travel is instead increasing and perhaps even returning to pre-Covid-19 levels. This is a cause for concern on several fronts.
"I’m concerned that we’re heading in the wrong direction so quickly. When I ask people if they want to travel in a more climate-friendly way, the vast majority say they’d like to but that they become overwhelmed when the practicalities present themselves and many then drop it," says Kari Tanderup.
Anne-Mette Hvas, dean at health, also sees increased air travel as a threat to the university's work on the green transition.
“As a large state knowledge institution, AU has a responsibility to take the lead in setting a climate agenda. And we can see that air travel has a particularly large footprint and it could end up impeding the university's climate strategy. For so long, we’ve prioritised timesaving over climate considerations when booking trips, and this needs to fundamentally change if we’re going to make inroads on this agenda," she says.
Overview of Aarhus University's CO2 emissions
There was a 25% increase in total CO2 emissions from 2021 to 2022, primarily due to an increase in air travel.
Source: DCE – Danish Centre for Environment and Energy
The UN recommends annual emissions per citizen of no more than 1.6 tonnes of CO2e
CO2e footprint for train travel t/r from Aarhus to Frankfurt: 0,018 tonnes CO2e
CO2e footprint for air travel t/r from Aarhus to Frankfurt: 0,196 tonnes CO2e
CO2e footprint for air travel t/r from Aarhus to San Francisco: 1,886 tonnes CO2e
Calculations by Kari Tanderup's research group show that one participant at a large European medical conference on average generates approx. 1.1 tonnes of CO2e. 85 per cent of the climate footprint is due to air travel
"We have, quite simply, not been ambitious enough"
Kari Tanderup wants Aarhus University's management team in particular to be more ambitious and take more responsibility for generating change.
"The fact that the senior management team has updated the travel policy and is focusing on air travel is a good start. However, if you really want to change things, a new and far more ambitious path needs to be charted. At the moment, the travel policy only encourages employees to take the train rather than fly if the travel time is less than five hours each way. This basically only eliminates travel between Aarhus and Copenhagen, and I think that’s an unambitious benchmark," she says.
Kari Tanderup would also like more direct feedback to employees and more departmental communication and information to help make it easier for individuals to assess the pollution generated by the different modes of travel.
Dean Anne-Mette Hvas agrees with Kari Tanderup's points and believes we need to change gears if AU is going to significantly reduce air travel.
"We need to make rail travel a more attractive alternative than it is today. If taking the train isn’t an option, then we need to determine when air travel is necessary. For example, the climate footprint of a flight to San Francisco is circa 10 times as large as a flight Frankfurt. As internationalisation is a defined focus area, we have to become much better at advising people on how to create strong international collaborations without having to travel as much as we have been accustomed to,” she says.
The dean's immediate goal is to shift focus from AU level to faculty level, which would make it easier to support, encourage and follow up locally when it comes to avoiding air travel.
"In the senior management team, we must continue working on reducing our CO2 footprint. But I think we as a faculty should set targets and figure out what we can do ourselves. For example creating a web page that clearly states what we as a faculty stand for and recommend. We need to be close to the people that this concerns because a general climate action plan at AU level won’t necessarily change anything for individual researchers at Health. We need to work on this," says Anne-Mette Hvas before concluding:
"We have, quite simply, not been ambitious enough, and in the future, we’ll need to set the direction and use passionate people like Kari Tanderup as role models. Aarhus University has made a general statement on air travel, but it's not enough to just ask people to fly less. We also need to do something to help and support employees locally."
Contact
Professor Kari Tanderup
Aarhus University, Department of Clinical Medicine and
Aarhus University Hospital, the National Centre for Particle Radiotherapy
Mobile: +45 26 61 60 84
Email: ktan@clin.au.dk
Dean Anne-Mette Hvas
Aarhus University, Dean's Office, Health
Telephone: +45 87 15 20 07
Email: dean.health@au.dk