The Young Academy: “Dutch universities’ sustainability plans not ambitious enough”
Climate policy at Dutch universities needs to be stepped up, concludes the Green Young Academy (GrYA) in a report published today. It is therefore calling on knowledge institutions to sign a manifesto. Six institutions have signed, the University of Amsterdam is still considering its position.
Society can expect universities and university medical centres (UMCs) to lead the way in the field of climate change, according to the Green Young Academy (GrYA), a national initiative for climate action within The Young Academy (DJA). However, this is not always the case, concludes the GrYA in its report Dertien Tinten Groen (Thirteen Shades of Green), in which it examined the sustainability plans of thirteen Dutch universities and seven university medical centres.
The report presents five recommendations. Dutch universities and UMCs must be more ambitious in their climate policy than required by Dutch climate legislation and standardise their sustainability plans so that more consistent terminology is used in the Netherlands. In addition, universities must report and monitor policy reports centrally. Continuity is also important: too often, sustainability coordinators are still appointed on a temporary basis. Above all, universities and UMCs can benefit from working together more and not operating in isolation.
Apples and oranges
According to Rogier Kievit, project leader of the Green Young Academy (GrYA) and former UvA student, it is difficult to compare universities in terms of sustainability. “All sustainability plans look different now. Sometimes they are separate documents, sometimes they are part of multi-year plans. Some universities say they will be climate neutral by 2050 but compensate for this with CO2 offsets (paying off CO2 emissions by planting a tree, for example), or do not take into account the travel behaviour of their employees, for example. From a national perspective, it’s like comparing apples and oranges.”
Based on the number of pages devoted to sustainability, TU Delft scores highly: the technical university has hundreds of pages of sustainability plans that name just as many people who are responsible for achieving those goals. With around sixty pages of sustainability reports, the UvA scores average.
UvA climate policy
On paper, the UvA’s climate goals are more ambitious than the Dutch Climate Act. That act stipulates that organisations must reduce their CO2 emissions by at least 55 per cent (compared to 1990) by 2030 at the latest and be energy neutral by 2050 at the latest. In its most recent plans, the UvA aims to be climate neutral by 2040.
This means that the UvA campuses must be fossil-free by 2040 and total energy consumption must be reduced to 70 kWh per cubic metre per year. Significant steps have been taken in this direction, writes sustainability policy officer Ewout Doorman. “Gas consumption has been halved since 2018, and the Roeterseiland Campus and Science Park are already heated with virtually no gas.”
But there have also been setbacks. The renovation of historic buildings in the city centre has proven to be less energy-efficient than previously thought. And the overloaded power grid has also thrown a spanner in the works. Like other companies in Amsterdam, the UvA can no longer simply obtain connections for its heat pumps. For the university quarter – where the buildings are the oldest and therefore require the most heating – it is virtually impossible to be gas-free by 2040.
“So we are also looking at whether we can make the laboratories at Science Park more sustainable and we want to use buildings more intensively to reduce the UvA’s total energy consumption,” writes Doorman.
Overall, Doorman is not dissatisfied with the progress of climate policy at the UvA. “We have already achieved the 2030 target set out in the Climate Act (55 per cent reduction in emissions compared to 1990) with a 63 per cent reduction in emissions in 2024 compared to 1990.” On its website, the UvA also tracks its progress for each sustainability measure.
Manifesto
The Young Academy and the Green Young Academy also wrote a manifesto entitled Duurzaam denken, duurzaam doen (Think sustainably, act sustainably) and called on universities and university medical centres to take their “planetary responsibility” and sign the manifesto.
By signing, the knowledge institutions commit to taking concrete action in the field of sustainability in education, research, operations and governance. This includes incorporating sustainability into all curricula, reporting on sustainability in annual reports, and ensuring that 20 per cent of research from 2030 onwards contributes concretely to a climate-neutral society. Another objective is to report annually on sustainability results and to take sustainability into account in the decision-making process.
Utrecht University, Eindhoven University of Technology, the University of Twente, Amsterdam UMC, KNAW and the Academy of Arts have already signed the manifesto. The UvA wants to study the various aspects carefully and is therefore still considering whether to sign.
The UvA welcomes the Young Academy’s initiative, says Doorman. “It is a document with strong ambitions across the entire spectrum of sustainability issues, not only in terms of business operations, but also research, education and governance. In terms of scope, it fits in well with the UvA’s approach as described in the White Paper.”
Doorman also emphasises that attention to the climate in education and research is important and that the UvA has already taken steps in this direction. “Through the UvA’s Teaching & Learning Centre, programmes receive support to integrate sustainability into their curricula. There is the UvA Sustainability Platform for interdisciplinary sustainability research and even a climate institute, Seven, with its own university professor of sustainability.”
