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Aviation-related greenhouse gas emissions in 2022 should be no more than 60% of 2018/2019 emissions. This will be followed by an annual reduction of 3% until 2030.
MNF’s 2018/2019 baseline emissions = 1787.7 tCO2 eq (ton of CO2 equivalent. This unit acknowledges the global warming potential of not only CO2 but of other greenhouse gases released during air travel.)
In 2022, the MNF Sustainable Travel Policy was based upon voluntary, personal reductions. With this policy in place, the faculty missed the 2022 target reductions by nearly 5% or 84.7 tons CO2 (equivalent to 85 flights Zurich - New York).
The MNF Faculty Executive approved the following policy proposal for implementation starting January 1, 2024:
240112 MNF Sustainable travel policy 2 and FAQs (PDF, 99 KB)
240222 MNF Sustainable Travel Policy Rahmenbedingungen (PDF, 98 KB)
1. How was this policy developed and by whom?
The MNF’s Sustainability Committee was tasked by the Faculty Executive with proposing a revised MNF Sustainable Travel Policy. Since May 2023, the committee collected and considered feedback from each department via:
The feedback was intensively discussed in the committee and after careful consideration the committee approved submission of the above policy proposal to the Faculty Executive.
Membership by MNF Department | |
---|---|
Astrophysics | Julian Adamek |
Chemistry | David Tilley, Anton Natter Perdiguero, Isik Tuncay |
Evolutionary Anthropology | Michael Krützen |
Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Sciences | Marc Hall, Stefan Lüpold, Aynur Erdogan, Cornelia Krug |
Geography | Maria Santos, Annina Michel |
Mathematics (as of 11-2023) |
Reinhard Furrer |
Molecular Life Sciences |
Darren Gilmour |
Neuroinformatics |
Valerio Mante |
Paleontology | Catalina Pimiento |
Physics | Johan Chang |
Plant and Microbial Biology | Célia Jäger-Baroux, Fabrizio Menardo |
Quantitative Biomedicine | Simon Albertini |
Systematic and Evolutionary Botany |
Barbara Keller |
2. Why don’t we allow for exceptions to the incentive tax at the faculty level?
The policy is designed to minimize additional administrative load, which would have to be funded by the incentive tax, as this would involve a reallocation of funding from research to administration. For this reason, we choose to use the flight and emissions data provided by the university-level Sustainability Team (t CO2 eq. by “Profitcenter”) rather than making a policy that would require departments and the Dean's Office to collect, curate, analyze, and use additional data. University-level data has no information about the purpose of travel (field work, conference, etc.) or role of the traveler (professor, student, post doc, etc.).
Additionally, offering exceptions was one of the points of greatest disagreement among departments. The MNF Sustainable Travel Policy therefore includes the 'Justice Fund' (tax refund) such that departments can determine if/which exceptions to the incentive tax work for their context.
3. Why is the incentive tax 200 CHF per t CO2 eq.?
4. Incentive tax examples (at 200 CHF per t CO2 eq.): You will pay in addition
5. Hypothetical example incentive tax and justice fund
GIUZ 2024, no. employees: 300
6. Sample workflow
Incentive tax: CHF 200 per t CO2:
7. Why is the incentive tax money earmarked primarily for train travel?
As the incentive tax is charged only two times per year, the policy is theoretically weaker at discouraging air travel by making it feel immediately more expensive. We therefore created a strong, positive incentive by basically making many forms of train travel free. By limiting eligible train travel to trips in which an origin or destination is outside of Switzerland or trips which cost more than 100 CHF if within Switzerland, we incentive people take the train when they normally would have flown.