Mobility

An estimated 17% of our university's total carbon footprint comes from the thousands of travel movements by our staff, students, visitors, and suppliers. Our aim is to reduce these emissions by a quarter in the coming years.

Commuting

Over half of our employees come to work by bicycle. Nearly a third of staff and 60% of students use public transport. Just 11% of employees and less than 2% of students travel by car to work. 

To encourage sustainable commuting, the university fully covers public transport costs for staff (from 1 November 2024).  The university also offers financial incentives to encourage cycling. Employees can offset bicycle-related costs against their salary, for example to purchase a bicycle or e-bike battery, or to maintain and repair their bicycle.

Business travel

Business trips generated 5,174 tonnes of CO₂ and made up 11.3% of the university’s total carbon footprint in 2023. Almost all of these emissions (99%) were from air travel.

To reduce carbon emissions from business travel, we are taking several steps.

• Taking the train is the norm for work trips of under 500km, or with a travel time of less than six hours.
• To help employees book more rail trips, there is the online Travelmap Europe, which provides information about the duration and CO₂ emissions of business trips, depending on the chosen means of transport (train or plane). Also available as a PDF.
• We offset emissions from business flights when these trips are booked through Uniglobe, the university's official travel agency.
• We encourage employees to consider virtual meetings as an alternative to travelling.

Looking ahead

We aim to cut carbon emissions from business travel by 25% in 2027 (compared to 2019). In line with this goal, we are looking at ways to further encourage sustainable travel and digital alternatives to travel, and to discourage flying. We are also working to improve our monitoring of carbon emissions from business travel. Our progress is reported in our annual Sustainability Monitor (available in Dutch).