01/11/2024

ifeu-Podcast: „Career versus climate protection“ - How researchers can reduce business air travel and still work successfully

Travelling by plane on business - it's all part and parcel of research. But what is good for exchange, networking and careers is bad for the climate: in many research institutions, more than half of emissions are currently caused by air travel. In episode 10 of the ifeu podcast, Nicole Aeschbach and Susann Görlinger explain how scientists can stay on the ground more often and thus protect the climate.

Who flies how much and how can air travel be reduced? In the new podcast episode of the "ifeu update", Susann Görlinger from the ifeu Institute and Nicole Aeschbach from the University of Heidelberg explain how a lot of air travel in research comes about and what can be done about it.

As part of their FlyingLess project, which is funded by the National Climate Initiative of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, the two sustainability experts and their project team conducted interviews with researchers, among other things, and analysed job requirement profiles and motivations. Based on the findings, the FlyingLess team then developed measures to reduce flying in the scientific community.

The dilemma: career versus climate protection
"The dilemma is internationalisation versus climate protection," comments Nicole Aeschbach. "Top-level research is internationally networked and personal dialogue is very important." For young researchers in particular, travelling by plane to international conferences is often essential in order to establish a network and position themselves in the scientific community.
This is probably no longer true to the same extent for researchers in senior positions. At the same time, however, they are currently the top emitters in the academic world: researchers in senior positions such as senior scientists and professors currently fly around four times as often as researchers without an academic leadership role.

Air travel is unevenly distributed
Aeschbach and Görlinger explain how air travel can be reduced overall in workshops, lectures and free materials. They make these available to research institutions on their project website www.flyingless.de. "We have set up a website with information, factsheets and best practices. Among other things, we have also developed a greenhouse gas monitoring system for business trips," explains Susann Görlinger.

Around 25 research institutions are already making intensive use of the services and developing measures. One university, for example, recently introduced an internal CO2 tax. "As far as specific measures are concerned, you can get creative," says Susann Görlinger. "The important thing is that we need a 60-70% reduction in air travel. Otherwise we won't be able to achieve the climate targets."

You can listen to and subscribe to ifeu Update - the environmental research podcast on the ifeu website, Spotify, Google and Apple Podcasts and on YouTube. The podcast is produced by Nora Lessing for the Berlin agency Ahnen&Enkel, which specialises in environmental and energy issues.

Press release as pdf-Download (in German)