The Environmental Management Ordinance (2009:907) requires that the University’s environmental management system and the sustainability work is followed up and presented. The most important results are presented in the University’s annual report. On this page, a summary of the sustainability report for 2022 is presented.
Umeå University's environmental and sustainability work is based on the requirements of the Higher Education Act, the 2030 Agenda and the sustainable development goals as well as the National Climate Framework for Higher Education Institutions (Klimatramverket för universitet och högskolor) and the University’s Regulation for environmental and sustainability work.
The University's Environmental policy is broad in its approach, and entails that the University will work proactively and innovatively to promote a sustainable society and achieve the goals of the 2030 Agenda. The Environmental policy, with its associated climate and sustainability goals and action plan, focuses on the University’s significant environmental aspects as related to the core mission: education, research and collaboration, and around these the University has a broad approach with regard to the 2030 Agenda and the 17 sustainable development goals.
In addition to the core mission, the aspects Energy Use, Travel, Purchasing and Procurement and Waste and Chemicals are focus areas within the environmental and sustainability work.
The Action plan for climate and sustainability is a three-year plan, and in 2022 the University has worked to implement its activities as well as to develop and further integrate sustainable development into our core activities.
In education, several steps have been made and, as of 2022, sustainable development has become a pervasive perspective in 85% of the University’s education programmes. This is an increase compared to previous years. Examples include the Faculty of Medicine's work to integrate sustainability perspectives into all educational programmes, and the Faculty of Science and Technology's work to develop and re-establish the Master of Science Programme in Engineering Chemistry. The revised programme will focus on the 2030 Agenda and the transformation of society and industrial initiatives in northern Sweden.
Further examples can be found in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities’ work to develop programmes and curricula based on UNESCO's key competences. In order to increase competence, teachers from faculties have attended the Centre for Education Development’s (UPL) continuing professional development course "Sustainable Development in Education". In two faculties, shorter versions of the two week long UPL course are being developed to enable all faculty teachers to improve sustainability competence as well as their ability to put their subject into a sustainability perspective. The University has also developed four so-called MOOC courses (Massive Open Online Courses) linked to climate change and commissioned by the Government. The courses deal with the environment, climate and health, architecture and climate, sustainable development from an educational perspective and hydrogen technology.
Linked to research on and for sustainable development, the interdisciplinary network UTRI (Umeå Transformation Research Initiative) has organised some fifteen seminars during the year to highlight current sustainability issues. In terms of collaboration, the University has formalised this with other universities in Sweden through the University Climate Network (Lärosätenas klimatnätverk). Furthermore, the Horizon 2020 project Ruggedised, regarding climate-change related technologies in the University District, has been completed. The result is that Umeå University has an analytic tool for working with sustainable local development and a digital twin of the main campus.
In terms of internal continuing professional development, two faculties have made special efforts in continuing the professional development of, and including, technical and administrative staff in sustainability work. The Faculty of Medicine held an administrators' day, with seminars and lectures on sustainability, and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities has continued and deepened the sustainability work begun by technical-administrative staff in 2021.
Examples of other activities carried out in 2022 include:
Energy consumption at the University was roughly the same in 2022 compared to 2021 and 2020, and ten percent lower than 2019 consumption. The solar cells on the Teacher Education Building, the Natural Sciences Building and the Social Sciences Building generated under 515 MWh of electricity, which corresponds to the electricity consumption of 20–25 single-family homes or just over one per cent of the University's total energy use.
As regards environmental requirements for the purchase of goods and services, environmental requirements were set in 48% of the contracts awarded.
In the coming year, the University intends to publish its first sustainability report, which will describe the University's activities and sustainability work based on each of the 17 Global Sustainability Goals of the 2030 Agenda. The University will also review the levelling of the climate and sustainability goals in the context of the development of the next action plan, 2024–2026. Furthermore, employee training on environment and sustainability is being finalised, with the aim of increasing employee engagement in sustainability issues. The deviations and suggested improvements that emerge from the internal environmental audit will also be clearly addressed.
In 2022, the University has continued to develop digital technologies to enable employees to work with travel-free meetings, as required by the University's environmental policy. Several faculties, departments and units are actively working to reduce the number of business trips and advocate digital meetings or environmentally friendly travel choices as a priority. One faculty has reported on its work with an operational-plan goal that Sustainable development and climate awareness will be reflected in all the faculty's activities, also mentioning that physical meetings are often important elements of operations, especially for research environments, and that, given Umeå's location in northern Sweden, this often requires travel. Furthermore, in light of the University's commitment to reducing its carbon footprint, they state that they aim for more meetings to take place via non-travel modes and, where physical meetings are required, air travel, for example, shall be increasingly replaced by rail travel.
Continuous work to improve technologies and tools is also in progress, and in 2022 a "Learning Lab", a room for hybrid meetings, was completed. During the year, a study on the creation of an internal fund for climate action was also carried out. The University has also commenced work with the acquisition of a tool for visualising the climate impact of business travel for different departments and units. The University has also participated in the REMM collaboration. In the context of the procurement of a new travel-agency service, environmental requirements have been set, which has resulted in a feature whereby the new service offers the most environmentally friendly option first. The carbon emissions of different travel options will also be visible in the booking mode. Travellers will also be informed and encouraged to book only necessary trips.
The climate-related emissions from business flights per employee per year are comparable to emissions in 2019, which is the base year for reporting. As the number of employees has increased since 2019, the total carbon emissions from business travel have also increased by about 10% over the same period. While digital meeting time has increased significantly since 2019, the number of digital meeting hours nevertheless decreased from 5 million hours in 2021 to 2.9 million hours in 2022, which is equivalent to 133 meetings per annual work unit.
Education is the university’s most important contributor to a sustainable transition of society.
New knowledge is a condition for meeting the challenges of society and making a sustainable transition.
Setting requirements when purchasing and procuring helps the university to reduce its climate impact.
Sharing services and climate-friendly solutions can optimise energy consumption and increase utilisation.
The university works actively to increase travel-free meetings and develop the forms for meetings.
By limiting the spread of dangerous substances, the university contributes to sustainable development.