Green Gown Awards 2016 – Carbon Reduction – University of Cumbria– Finalist

Lower mileage; lower carbon; lower costs

The University of Cumbria has reduced its reliance on travel and vehicles through an extensive change programme. This has involved staff and students, business and commuting journeys. We have implemented Skype for business, bus passes for students, incentives for car sharing, a novel scheme to make rail travel more attractive, together with fundamental policy changes.

Most recently, we have focussed on reducing use of grey fleet.  Not only is grey fleet particularly environmentally damaging, it is financially costly and involves an assumption that staff have their own vehicle to use for business trips. As well as implementation of positive alternatives, we sought to make grey fleet less attractive by reducing the level of financial reimbursement. 

As well as an overall 17% reduction per FTE in CO2e emissions from business travel, the key outcome for us has been a 43% reduction in grey fleet mileage.

Top 3 learnings

1 Change programmes with a wide range of outcomes (financial, wellbeing, environmental) have the greatest chance of approval and success

2 Engage with staff and students before making changes – better programmes will be possible as a result

3 Design methods for keeping track of success at the start, don’t try to ‘retrofit’ quantitative measuring at a later date.

CO2t Savings: 240
Actual/Estimated: Actual
No. of yrs: 4