This year’s People and Planet league table could be the last unless the Office for Students has a change of heart

While young people call for urgent action on the climate emergency, universities are lagging behind, with two-thirds likely to fail their 2020 targets for the reduction of carbon emissions. And academic conferences are partly to blame.

Air travel is estimated to be responsible for more than 2% of global human-induced emissions, and lecturers’ flights could be adding significantly to the carbon footprint of many universities, according to transport data provided voluntarily by 67 institutions.

According to the 2019 People and Planet University League published on Tuesday, the sector appears to be taking the issues more seriously, increasingly embedding sustainability into its teaching. But still only 49 of 154 institutions are likely to meet the target set by the former funding agency of a 43% reduction of carbon emissions between 2005 and 2020.

The table compiled by People and Planet, the student-led network, scores universities out of 100 on criteria such as environmental audits and management systems, the number of staff working on the issues, ethical investment, carbon management, waste and recycling, and sustainable food.

The lack of progress is frustrating, says Hannah Smith, the network’s co-director of campaigns and research. “It’s abhorrent to watch universities fail on climate change at a time when people on the frontlines of the impacts are fighting back against heatwaves and forest fires. Universities have a duty to stand with those communities and their students on strike and use their privileged position to act,” she says.

Network member Steff Farley, 25, a maths postgraduate student at Loughborough University, adds: “The findings expose the dragging lack of willpower, vision and energy in the sector, which shows disregard for the young climate strikers at schools, colleges and at their own universities.”

The table shows that just eight universities have a policy to invest in renewable energy, says Emily Adams, 23, who is studying marine biology and oceanography at the University of Plymouth. “Our universities must now step up to take action to fund a just climate transition,” she adds.

This year’s findings on carbon reduction are all the more alarming because this could be the last we hear of them. Under the government’s higher education reforms, universities are no longer obliged to provide data on carbon reduction and other green issues to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa).

The Office for Students (OfS) has taken over the role of overseeing the higher education sector from Hefce, the funding council that originally set the targets. An OfS spokeswoman explains: “We are committed to being a low-burden regulator and will therefore only mandate data collection where it is necessary to support our regulatory functions. Currently, the OfS does not have a regulatory need for the data within the estates management record.”

She adds: “We fully support Hesa and providers working together to collect data on a voluntary basis where this adds value, but providers will have freedom to opt in to such collections. Where Hesa and providers engage in additional activities beyond those mandated by OfS, this will be subject to additional subscriptions.”

People and Planet say that voluntary data collection would be incomplete and that having to pay to access the information could put it beyond the organisation’s reach. Smith says: “It is vexatious that while students of all ages go on strike to build a global movement for an equitable carbon transition, the OfS rows backwards to a time where measuring carbon emissions was deemed superfluous admin.”

Universities say that they have struggled to make serious carbon reductions against a background of increased student numbers and campus expansion. In addition, the trend towards collaboration between academics from different countries and the growth of the conference scene has led to more lecturers getting on planes.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Manchester Metropolitan University has reduced its carbon emissions by 41% and is aiming to be zero carbon by 2038. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

According to a study of air travel at the University of British Columbia in Canada in 2017, staff from just five departments made 709 air trips over 18 months. The resulting emissions were more than 200 times the building emissions for the whole of the geography department. Follow-up research claimed that there was no identifiable link between air travel and academic productivity.

“Universities and the academic community need to drive a fast culture shift away from the kudos of conference presentation tally scores, to one of sharing just as much – if not more – research through innovative and participatory alternatives,” says Smith. “Video-conferencing technology has come a long way.”

She identifies three institutions, or “trailblazers”, at the top of the table that show what can be done: the University of Gloucestershire, which comes top, followed closely by Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and Nottingham Trent University (NTU). New universities dominate the top 10, but some of the Russell Group of research-intensive, older universities have improved their positions. Bristol has risen from 27th in the 2017 table (the last one) to 11th this year, and Newcastle has gone up from 20th to 12th. Oxford, more used to being top of higher-education rankings, is just 45th, but that is an improvement on its previous position of 54th. Cambridge falls from 58th to 67th.

Gloucestershire gained marks for divesting all fossil-fuel investments and for already meeting its carbon target, with a 46% emissions reduction since 2005, despite the expansion of its estate. But the university’s commitment goes far beyond its footprint to embrace the “brainprint”, says Alex Ryan, director of sustainability and an academic with national teaching fellow status, who is driving the integration of sustainability across the course portfolio.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nottingham Trent University comes third in the rankings. Photograph: Nottingham Trent University

“From the beginning, our sustainability programme has been geared towards academic innovation,” she explains. “Reducing practical impacts is important but, as a university, our core sustainability legacy is the graduates we send into the world to live and work sustainably. Our curriculum experiences are not about isolated, add-on modules or abstract knowledge without application. The gearshift will come from students learning how to create change for sustainability whatever their profession. We don’t want them to go out into employment as, say, accountants or social workers who just reproduce an unsustainable paradigm. We want system change.”

MMU has reduced its carbon emissions by 41% and is aiming to be zero carbon by 2038. One of its most successful initiatives has been a carbon-literacy scheme, where money is put aside to compensate for the emissions generated by international air travel, and then used to train students in tackling climate change. So far, more than 800 students have received the training.

NTU has launched a green academy as a permanent department working to engage students in sustainability. It puts on pop-up events, recruits an army of eco-ambassador students, gives green rewards to staff, and even keeps bees and peregrine falcons.

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Biggest mover, the University of Essex – up from 124 in 2017 to 44 – says a lot has happened since the last table, such as structural changes to put an eight-strong sustainability team at the heart of the estates and campus section. There has been a review of how sustainability is being introduced into different subject areas and the launch of a free sustainability summer school for students. Daisy Malt, its sustainability engagement officer, says the changes have been driven from the top, at vice-chancellor level – and by students. “It’s becoming a big deal, partly because of publicity in the mainstream media and the Blue Planet effect, and students are wanting to be more involved,” she says.

Most of those in the bottom 10 are small, specialist institutions. Rose Bruford College in Sidcup, Kent, which has the lowest score, did not comment. The second to last, the University of the Highlands and Islands, said the scores were not a true representation because each of its 13 partner colleges manages its own estate. “We are moving towards a single, partnership-wide carbon-management plan,” said a spokeswoman.