Learn about the environmental impact of UBC’s emissions from business air travel, how they are distributed across the community, and how we measure and quantify them.

Overview

Business air travel at UBC is defined as all air travel for which UBC pays or administers funding. It encompasses travel for research and administrative purposes as well as athletics travel. Annually, business air travel at UBC tends to be distributed among these categories as follows:

  • Research travel: 50%-55% 
  • Administrative travel: 40%-45% 
  • Athletics travel: 5%-10%

How UBC Measures its Air Travel Emissions

At UBC, emissions estimations for air travel are based on annual reports received from travel vendor partners, spend data from expense reimbursements, and emissions factors from the BC Government’s Best Practices for Quantifying Greenhouse Gases Methodology.

UBC's methodology was updated in 2024 by the UBC Sustainable Travel Program to reflect the growing scientific consensus around the fact that aviation produces more atmospheric warming through non-CO2 effects, which are rarely factored into emissions estimates. This updated methodology was applied to emissions estimates from 2013 onward and included in the UBC 2023 Climate Change Accountability Report.

2-3x

Research indicates that two-thirds of the atmospheric warming from aviation come from non-CO2-related radiative forcing effects such as contrail and cirrus cloud formation. As a result, aviation's warming impact is often 2-3x greater than typically accounted for.

The Impacts of Air Travel

Air travel is highly emissions-intensive. Estimates conducted by the UBC Sustainable Travel Program indicate that a single round-trip from Vancouver to Toronto or Los Angeles produces the same per-capita amount of atmospheric warming as an entire year’s worth of UBC Vancouver per-capita operational emissions.

Demographics

Research conducted by Seth Wynes and Simon Donner indicated that of the population of UBC staff and faculty fliers, 36% were responsible for 80% of air travel emissions and the top 8-11% were responsible for half of all air travel emissions.

Examinations of 2023 travel data conducted by the Sustainable Travel Program indicated that 1% of UBC’s entire workforce (fliers and non-fliers) generated 20% of business air travel emissions.