Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research

 

Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research is a partnership between the universities of East Anglia (Headquarters), Cardiff, Manchester, Newcastle, Sussex and Fudan University in Shanghai.

The Tyndall Travel Strategy includes a voluntary code of conduct and a system to monitor and justify travel emissions and to support individual commitments to reducing emissions. It is under constant development and aims to be simple, inclusive, self-guided, open and transparent, and driven by an overall goal.

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Concrete measures to reduce air travel

In the code of conduct, Tyndall staff commits to

  • monitor and reduce carbon emissions by setting personal objectives,
  • justify travels made (use of a decision tree),
  • choose locations for events that they organise that allow a low carbon footprint of travel of the participants
  • encourage, incorporate and technically support online speakers and webcasts
  • sensitize other staff members to the need of the research community to walk the talk on climate change
  • work with peers on alternative metrics of success and encourage the promotion of low-carbon research

 

Tyndall Centre has developed a monitoring system: a simple monthly survey that gives feedback on the data every three months (comparison of travel emissions to those of other colleagues). The plan is to make the emissions public.

They also developed a “scoring tool” that can be used to monitor personal emissions through time by giving its user a personal “score” that can be compared with those of other colleagues.

Employees that take part in the project are asked to commit to, for example, cap their score,reduce their score by a certain percentage in the next year or to do no more than a certain amount of hours of flying next year.

 

Links and Resources: 

Tyndall Centre Travel strategy