Our progress | University of Strathclyde

We are committed to keeping our staff and students informed of our progress towards our social and environmental sustainability vision.

Sustainability Report 2023/24

Read our full 2023/24 annual sustainability report.

Our progress in 2023/24

The 2023/24 Academic Year was not without challenge. With the financial pressure that the university sector in Scotland has been under, activity has primarily focused on strategic planning, with fewer large-scale decarbonisation projects. However, we have made significant progress on new strategic commitments, policies, and sustainability engagement across the whole University community. Our sustainability team and Centre for Sustainable Development have both taken significant steps to embed sustainability more fully into teaching and learning, research, and operational activity at Strathclyde.

Sustainability and circular economy principles are being more thoroughly embedded in our capital projects through collaboration between the sustainability team, estates, and procurement. The upcoming £30m CHATIC Project - a refurbishment of the original Students Union building - is working towards meeting the Scottish Net Zero Public Sector Building Standard, the first of our construction projects to target this.

We launched our Sustainability Learning Passport, an online learning platform for staff and students to increase knowledge of sustainable development and climate solutions. In 2023/24, the University CFO resumed chair of our Strategic Sustainability Steering Group ensuring strong ongoing governance.

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Highlights in sustainability 2023/24

Co-Designing our Sustainability Strategy

Throughout the first half of 2024 we undertook significant staff and student engagement on a new Social and Environmental Sustainability Strategy. This will update our previous Climate Change and Social Responsibility Plan and set out our strategic sustainability ambitions across four key themes:

We are developing implementation plans that define activities and success metrics to deliver the strategy.

The consultation process was well received and provides a good platform for shared ownership of ambition across Strathclyde. However, lots of work remains to be done to ensure buy-in and successful implementation across the institution.

Education for Sustainable Development in the Curriculum

In June 2023, it was agreed that the University would commit to embedding education for sustainable development across all our undergraduate curricula, which now forms KPI 15 of Strathclyde 2030. By 2027, our ambition is to ensure all courses have programme level learning outcomes related to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). These will encompass integration of the UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development skills and competencies, the UN Sustainable Development Goals and appropriate pedagogical methods.

This marks a significant step forward in realising Strathclyde’s potential to empower our students with the knowledge, skills, values, and behaviours to live and work in a way that ensures the long-term security of the environment, economy, and society.

Progress on Net Zero

In May 2024, our new Travel Policy was launched, putting safeguarding and sustainability at the forefront of business travel planning, with new policies on domestic travel and class of flights aimed at reducing emissions. Challenges remain around fair implementation of the policy and ensuring buy-in across all faculties.

We made good progress on building refurbishments, lab energy efficiency measures, and space utilisation projects to reduce energy consumption. But these were marginal in terms of the overall size of our estate. Our total emissions from energy consumption increased from the previous year, highlighting the scale of challenge we face – and the importance of significant capital investment in the coming years.