University of Washington Air Travel: A Sustainable Path Forward FINAL REPORT March 18, 2016 Prepared for: UW Sustainability Office Submitted by: Brian Mickelson (MPA Candidate, Evans School of Public Policy & Governance) Gretchen Thuesen (MMA Candidate, School of Marine & Environmental Affairs) Nicholas Waldo (Ph.D. program, Civil & Environmental Engineering) Faculty Advisor: Alison Cullen (Professor, Evans School of Public Policy & Governance) Client Liaison: Elise Glassman (Project Manager, UW Sustainability Office) 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The University of Washington’s (UW) Climate Action Plan (CAP) set broad sustainability goals, including a commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. While the university has made great progress in both quantifying and reducing many of its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it only has rough estimates of air travel emissions, and has taken few steps to reduce them. This project was commissioned by the UW Sustainability Office to better understand the university’s footprint from air travel, which is estimated to account for 11 percent of emissions, making it is a key target for reductions. The goal of this report is to provide guidance to the Sustainability Office around tracking air travel more accurately, and to uncover faculty and staff attitudes around flying as a key step to creating and implementing emissions reduction strategies. We received financial records of airplane ticket reimbursements from the UW Travel office and wrote custom software scripts to incorporate origin and destination airports. With this route data, we were able to calculate the actual mileage flown by specific departments, the most common routes flown, and other relevant statistics. We used this travel data to target surveys and interviews at the 30 departments shown to travel the most. The surveys were distributed online over departmental email lists, while in-person interviews were arranged by reaching out to directly representative faculty. By adding more accurate mileage estimates to existing travel data, we determined that UW air travel emissions accounted for at least 23,800 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCDE) in 2014, 33 percent higher than UW’s estimate. From the surveys and interviews, we learned that many respondents who fly frequently resent much of the time they feel they have to spend travelling, would like to travel less, and would be happy to switch to videoconferencing or ground transportation whenever possible. Many respondents also reported widespread skepticism of carbon offsets programs, which the CAP stipulates will eventually be necessary to reach carbon neutrality. We apply a change management framework to understand our results in the context of the current flying culture at UW. We recommend UW adopt a robust change management strategy to encourage rapid adoption of and buy-in to five emissions reduction strategies: ● Implement a universal booking system to better track air travel and provide a baseline from which to measure the efficacy of future reduction strategies ● Work with other institutions to partner on ways for faculty to fly less ● Replace travel with videoconferencing wherever possible ● Utilize ground transportation for shorter distances ● Create consistent and open dialogue across campus prior to investing in carbon offsets 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Summary……….........................................................................................................2 Table of Contents….……….........................................................................................................3 List of Abbreviations………………………………………………………………………………………………………………5 1.0 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….6 1.1 Background………………………………………………………………………………………………………………6 1.2 Project Outline…………………………………………………………………………………………..…………….7 1.3 Surveying the Landscape………………………………………………………………………………………….8 1.3.1 Overview……………………………………………………………………………………………………8 1.3.2 Air Travel in Higher Education……………………………………………………………………9 1.3.3 Air Travel at UW Peer Institutions……………………………………………………………..9 1.3.4 Air Travel at UW……………………………………………………………………………………….11 2.0 Methodology……..............................................................................................................12 2.1 Data Collection……………………………………………………………………………………………………….12 2.1.1 Travel Data……………………………………………..……………………………………………….12 2.1.2 Surveys and Interviews…………………………………………………………………………….12 2.2 Data Analysis………………………………………………………………………………………………………….13 2.2.1 Travel Data……………………………………………………………..……………………………….13 2.2.2 Surveys and Interviews…………………………………………………………………………….14 3.0 Results and Discussion……................................................................................................15 3.1 Travel Data……………………………………………………………..………………………………………………15 3.1.1 Frequent Routes……………………………………………………………..……………………….15 3.1.2 Frequent Flyers……………………………………………………………..…………………………18 3.1.3 Frequent Months of Travel……………………………………………………………..……….20 3.2 Surveys and Interviews……………………………………………………………..……………………………20 3.3 Study Limitations……………………………………………………………..…………………………………….28 4.0 Recommendations……......................................................................................................31 4.1 Behavior Change……………………………………………………………..……………………………………..31 4.1.1 Framework……………………………………………………………..……………………………….31 4.1.2 Application to Air Travel……………………………………………………………..……………32 4.2 Universal Booking System……………………………………………………………..……………………….33 4.3 Alternatives to Flying……………………………………………………………..………………………………34 4.3.1 Flying Less………………………………………………………………………………………………..34 4.3.2 Videoconferencing…………………………………………………………………………………..36 4.3.3 Ground Transportation…………………………………………………………………………….38 4.4 Carbon Offsets……………………………………………………………..…………………………………………40 5.0 Conclusions and Next Steps……........................................................................................41 3 6.0 References……..................................................................................................................43 7.0 Appendices…….................................................................................................................46 7.1 Appendix 1 - Peer Institution Comparison………………………………………………………………47 7.2 Appendix 2 - Carbon Calculator Results………………………………………………………………….48 7.3 Appendix 3 - MATLAB Codebook…………………………………………………………………………….49 7.4 Appendix 4 - Faculty Air Travel Survey Questions……………………………………………………52 7.5 Appendix 5 - Staff Air Travel Survey Questions……………………………………………………….56 7.6 Appendix 6 - Faculty and Staff Air Travel Interview Questions………………………………..59 7.7 Appendix 7 - T-test Results from Faculty and Staff Survey Data………………………………61 4 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AASHE -- Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education ACUPCC --American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment CAP -- Climate Action Plan CTA -- Central Travel Account EPA -- Environmental Protection Agency eTrav -- eTravel FLCF -- Finger Lakes Climate Fund FY -- Fiscal Year GHG -- Greenhouse gas ICA -- Intercollegiate Athletics ICAO -- International Civil Aviation Organization ICCT -- International Council on Clean Transportation IRB -- Institutional Review Board LEED -- Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design MBM -- Market Based Mechanism MTCDE -- Metric Tons Carbon Dioxide Equivalent NSF -- National Science Foundation PGI -- Premiere Global Services PI -- Principal Investigator PM -- Per Passenger Mile STARS -- Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System UC -- University of California UW -- University of Washington 5 1.0 INTRODUCTION 1.1 BACKGROUND The University of Washington (UW) was one of the first signatories to the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) in 2007. As part of this commitment, UW and other higher education institutions pledged to develop a Climate Action Plan (CAP) that set broad sustainability goals and strategies. The UW CAP, released in 2009, established an aspirational date for achieving carbon neutrality; created mechanisms and indicators for tracking progress; and made publicly available its reporting on annual greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System (STARS) through the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE).1 The CAP set goals to reduce UW’s GHG emissions 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 36 percent below 2005 levels by 2035, and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.2 It outlines several actions to reduce emissions, including energy efficiency upgrades in buildings, replacing electricity from fossil fuel sources with renewable energy, reducing and recycling waste, and investing in cleaner fuels to green the university vehicle fleet.3 By most measures, UW has achieved significant progress on its sustainability goals--the university now has 29 LEED-certified buildings, has diverted 66 percent of waste from landfills through reuse, recycling and composting, and avoided $14.5 million in utility costs through energy conservation measures (2015).4 But one area in which UW, and most ACUPCC universities, have not made as much progress is understanding the full extent of their carbon footprint from air travel. Figure 1 estimates UW’s carbon reduction progress through 2014. GHG emissions are broken down by “scope.” Scope 1 emissions are generated directly Figure 1, UW greenhouse gas emissions 2000-2014, plus targets to by each of UW’s three campuses 2020 (Source: