Office of Environmental Sustainability
Staff Air Travel
Staff Air travel is the second largest contributor to NUS carbon footprint, accounting for about 25% of NUS’ total carbon emissions. In calculating GHG due to air travel, NUS has only taken into consideration staff and faculty air travel; air travel by students for Student Exchange Program, Summer Programs, overseas internship and attachment programs or similar overseas programs are not included due to the complexity of gathering the data.
In calculating carbon emissions due to air travel, NUS has chosen to use Atmosfair for AY 07-09 which gives specific amounts of emissions for each location instead of just using generic conversion factors for short haul and long haul flights. In 2007, air travel data was collected from the 3 travel agents: Air Services, Diners World Travel and Safe2Travel. Information from Air Services were detailed enough to calculate the carbon emissions due to each flight route. Information provided by Diners World Travel and Safe2Travel were inadequate to generate emissions calculations, hence the carbon emissions due to flights booked from these 2 travel agents were calculated based on average from data analyzed from Air Services
With effect from September 2008, NUS changed its appointed travel agent to Pacific Arena Private Limited. Since then, NUS is able to obtain consolidated monthly reports indicating the class, destinations and number of tickets. This allows us to use Atmosfair for a more accurate estimation of carbon emissions due to staff air miles.
As part of the efforts to reduce NUS’ carbon emissions due to staff air travel, NUS senior management has initiated 20% cut in air budget for Financial Year 09 based on Financial Year 07 actual expenditure.
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