Staying grounded

In its never-ending quest to be at the bleeding edge of self-promoting lip service, the University of Not-Bielefeld introduced its new environmentally-friendly travel policy at the start of this year. After what must have been countless collective person-hours in at least the high single-digit range, the following was foisted upon University members for all their official business trips:

1. a ban on plane flights for destinations otherwise reachable within eight hours and within Germany in general and
2. an obligatory carbon tax on all plane flights to be paid into a dedicated, central university fund.

The irony here is just how environmentally unfriendly such highly innovative stuff like this is. I’m sure that the Earth must’ve stopped spinning when these ideas were first pitched. A carbon tax on plane flights? Wow … Hope that no one was burning the midnight oil coming up with that outside-the-cardboard-box, original idea, especially given how much extra CO2 all that combustion would’ve released. Next time, how about saving all that extracurricular brainstorming for normal working hours when all those bright ideas can be generated using solar power instead of fossil fuels?

Presumably, the members of the responsible think tank also don’t have to walk past the same inspirational sign on campus every day that I do:

It’s not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.

Edwin Land

(Although given that ideas can either be new or old and that neither seem to be especially needed, I really have no idea what ol’ Edwin is trying to inspire in anyone here.)

It’s not that being more responsible environmentally is bad—in fact it’s desperately needed—it’s just that its implementation, especially by the University of Not-Bielefeld, more often than not highlights the clash between reality and either idealism or jargon.

For starters, despite the label, the new policy is not environmentally friendly. There is no question that trains and busses have a way smaller carbon footprint than planes do, but that merely makes them friendlier, not friendly as such. Want to know what a truly environmentally-friendly travel policy looks like?

Don’t travel.

If the recent corona pandemic taught us anything, it’s that business trips are often optional luxuries and that many viable alternatives to them exist. But, sadly, human nature has taught us that the pandemic taught us nothing. In the span of only five years, we went from the death of the airline industry as we knew it to a full recovery in terms of passenger numbers and profits. And then some.

And, as is typical for the University of Not-Bielefeld, they are once again explicitly embracing the diversity amongst their academic disciplines by subjecting them all to yet another one-size-fits-all solution.

The new travel policy is unlikely to impact on, say, philosophers to any great degree because they can get into one of their long-winded arguments with anyone, anywhere, and at any time. It’s much different for researchers doing field work. Let’s face it, unless you find peat bogs inherently interesting, there’s not much for anyone from archaeology to ecology to do in northern Germany. More cynically, the University of Not-Bielefeld has been spending the past decade or so trying to grow its international exposure, both with respect to its teaching and its research. So, with its new travel policy, the University is effectively punishing those people who were foolish enough to listen to it in the past.

To its credit, however, the University has recognized this potential inequity from the get-go and already provided a solution in the form of it matching any fees paid into the central fund. Not to put too fine of a point on it, but what??? That just makes the whole pot bigger rather than balancing out who put how much into it. Adding insult to financial injury is that many people will probably also be indirectly paying the associated matching fee because the University takes a cut of any grant money they brought in to fund their trips abroad, with that cut to be used at the University’s discretion.

And, true to form, it gets even worse. The University has also said that it reserves the right to stop paying in the matching fees if it starts serving as an incentive for people to fly more. Again, what??? People are going to actively decide to destroy the environment that little bit faster not because plane travel is usually more convenient but because doing so will help pay for projects to save the environment that little bit slower? Dunno. Seems to me that those people wanting the fund to be as big as possible are also the ones least likely to pay into it.

Based on this example of the matching fund, I’m pretty certain that ol’ Edward would like to change his admonishment against having old ideas to instead just stop having outright stupid ones.

Nevertheless, the University still proudly proclaims these ideas on the webpage describing the policy. What the webpage doesn’t doesn’t actually talk about, however, is telecommuting. That important option, and the fact that it is the one that the University of Not-Bielefeld sees as the default, is instead buried two links away in the invitingly titled Amtliche Mitteilungen zur Richtlinie der Universität für klimafreundliche Dienstreisen (Official Announcement of the Guidelines of the University’s Policy for Environmentally-Friendly Travel). Instead, the webpage mostly presents a map of Europe showing how far away selected cities are together with the non-flying travel time to reach them and, for an even more selected few, the CO2 impact when flying to them. All the cities are put into three broad categories: must-not fly (under eight hours or within Germany), should-not fly (between eight and 12 hours), and could fly (over 12 hours).

One of the cities falling into that last category is Lisbon, which the map helpfully points out is only about 36 hours away if you don’t fly. Obviously, this kind of travel itinerary is only for the really devoted or the really hardcore. I don’t know about anyone else, but I go pretty squirrely after only about six hours traveling in any sort of tin can, which doesn’t even get me to the “should-not” category. And for other people sitting on the fence for a trip in that category, the University is more than willing to help keep their thoughts grounded through levying an additional charge of 50 EUR for flights under 1000 km. (From the text, it seems clear that the 1000 km refers to the one-way distance. What’s not so clear is if you have to pay the extra 50 EUR just for the entire trip or for each leg of it.)

Even more helpfully, the webpage also contains links to several portals for you to purchase your environmentally friendly bus or train tickets. Unhelpfully, however, most of these sites are rather meagre with respect to their offerings. For instance, not a single one could find me a train connection to Lisbon. The best I got was a bus. With two stopovers. And this same portal also showed me that flying would save me 33 hours, one stopover, and 34 EUR in comparison. (One way. Double those savings if you want to come back home.)

Of course, a policy wouldn’t be a real policy unless creates extra paperwork. And the form associated with this one is classic admin stuff. Another completely new form that could have been merged with either of the two already existing ones relating to business trips, ones that were also updated mere days before the new policy came into force. Plus, the new form also requires you to do all the work. Instead of simply entering the distance flown, you have to enter how much kg CO2e the airplane used and then multiply that by the carbon tax (0.055 EUR / kg CO2e) to get how much you owe in total. Thankfully, the University at least provides a link to the Atmosfair website where you can figure out the footprint of your trip.

(No idea if the University actually asked Atmosfair about doing this. Their page is actually designed to for you to financially offset your emissions to support their own environmental projects. Aren’t they gonna love it when all the employees of the University of Not-Bielefeld start using their search engine, their database, and their calculations for free?)

Fortunately, however, doing all the bookwork also gives you the opportunity to cook those same books a little. You’re expected to include all stopovers (which increase the carbon impact), but who’s going to verify if you did? (And if they do check it, then why can’t they enter all the info in the first place themselves?) There are also other variables that you can specify like the type of plane and which class you flew in, but the University webpage explicitly mentions that these are optional. And no wonder considering that the Atmosfair website defaults slightly high for both. Don’t list your class and their calculations average you into something close to premium economy. Don’t specify your plane and you end up having taken something like an Airbus A330-200, either a Boeing 737-500 or 747-400, or an Embraer 170, a collection of aircraft united by all being out of production and also not really being flown that much in Europe. Or, in other words, comparative kerosene guzzlers.

The difference between default and reality can be pretty high. Let’s take London as an example, a destination that falls into the “should-not fly” category. Atmosfair’s calculations default to an impact of 373 kg CO2e or 20.52 EUR for the University’s eco-fund. But specify that you flew economy and in a Boeing 737 MAX 8 (which is the real plane Ryanair flies on that route and the only class Ryanair offers) and those numbers nosedive to 222 kg CO2e and a tax of only 12.21 EUR, a savings of some 40.5%. But what do I know about planes, right? Claim that you flew in an ATR-72—which is a legitimate option for that distance if you can find an airline using it for that route (or at all)—and you can drop your CO2e impact even further to a diminutive 88 kg to only donate the equivalent of a cup of coffee (4.84 EUR) to the University. Even with those extra 50 EUR that you have to pay for flying under 1000 km, it’s still worth it.

(And for those suddenly developing a conscience, I’ll point out that even the University seems to be doing some creative accounting here, with their map putting London at a distance of only 202 kg CO2e …)

Or, for some advanced civil (servant) disobedience, just don’t register the business trip with the university. After all, no trip means no travel restrictions and no carbon tax, right? That I can tell, there are three reasons why we should be letting the university know about our business trips:

1. because admin wants us to,
2. to be covered by the university’s (private) healthcare insurance for the trip, and
3. to get your costs reimbursed.

For those who have been following along, #1 is usually not a good idea and therefore not a valid justification. The same is true for the obvious reason that seems to be missing, namely to inform the university that we’re away. For reasons that I still don’t understand (but don’t dare to question out loud), the University of Not-Bielefeld gives its professors an awful lot of freedom. We have a 40-hour workweek but no one ever enforces it, probably because they’d quickly realize that very few professors only work 40 hours a week. I’ve also never had to apply to go on vacation and, in fact, have never been officially told just how many vacation days per year I have. So if the University doesn’t care when I’m on vacation, does it really care if I’m on a business trip? Not there is not there, right? And, in becoming a civil servant, you’re basically forced to get private healthcare insurance anyway, so #2 falls away for me as well.

That leaves #3. The costs for a lot of my trips, however, are already covered by the other side meaning that there’s no reason for me to submit the claim form and its new ugly sibling, the carbon-tax form. Or, even more cynically for trips like this, I can dutifully register them with the University but, like with not applying for the European A1 certificate (Entsendebescheinigung), similarly forget to submit the carbon-tax form and see if anyone notices.

And, again, it’s all such low-hanging fruit taking potshots at easy targets. (Hmm. Sort of like this blog when you stop to think about it …) Want to see a huge carbon footprint? Take a look in your average molecular lab and see how much plastic waste is generated there each day.

As an example, a simple 5 µL Eppendorf reaction tube has a total impact of about 25 to 35 g CO2e depending on how much of the tube is made from fossil-sourced versus bio-based plastics. Barely worth talking about, right? Especially when you consider we each breathe out about a kilogram of the stuff each day. But, to fill that tube, you need a plastic pipette tip with its 2.2 to 3.1 g CO2e footprint. Again, next to nothing. If you want to sequence a gene, you’ll need at least four of each, one set to extract the DNA, one to increase the quantity of the DNA, and two to sequence both strands of it. There are more steps and more tubes involved than that, but we’re still well under 200 g of CO2e in total, so who cares?

Ok then, let’s scale things up. Normal (Sanger) DNA sequencing is good for about 1000 nucleotides, the individual letters in the DNA. The length of the human genome, however, is roughly 3 200 000 000 letters, requiring about 3.2 million sequencing reactions. And suddenly, those 200 g CO2e turn into 350 to 490 tonnes CO2e. Or about 15 lifetimes of breathing on average. This also all assumes that everything works perfectly the first time around, whereas the reality is that anywhere from 10 to 25% of these reactions need to be redone. (More reality: although the Human Genome Project officially ran from 1990 to 2003, it was only 92% complete when it “ended”. It took them until the summer of 2023 and much more CO2e to finally get that last and very tricky 8% done.) Admittedly, next-generation sequencing has drastically lowered the amount of plastic waste and genomes are becoming stupidly easy and cheap to sequence now, but the footprint of any molecular lab remains monstrously huge.

In the end, despite the University saying exactly the opposite, the policy is inherently punitive. People who have to go off-continent for their work are unduly penalized because the reality is that flying often does present the lowest possible impact in such cases. If you’ve got time to kill and keep a sharp lookout for wayward icebergs, it is indeed possible to go by boat to North America, but cruise ships makes planes look positively green by comparison, with the necessary long-haul flight having only a marginally higher carbon footprint than a city bus. And that’s what this policy should be all about: encouraging people to switch to better alternatives rather than just penalizing them when there aren’t any.

The policy also doesn’t give us the choice to offset our carbon in other ways. Most airlines allow you to do this when buying the ticket and, in fact, Ryanair now has this option switched on by default. It’s not that I have any great love for or trust in the airlines but then I also don’t want the University of Not-Bielefeld to be putting up any more million-Euro bike racks (for a whole 170 bikes!) and going around telling everyone how environmentally responsible (but not fiscally retarded) they are.

And that’s my final gripe (for today): the policy was implemented without the University having any idea about how to spend all the carbon-tax money they are going to raise, estimated to be 120 000 EUR for 2025 (including the matching grant from the President’s Office). It’s far easier for the university community to literally buy into something obligatory like this when it knows that there is some well-thought-out plan behind it.

But no. Despite the University’s climate roadmap now being several years old, all that’s known for this carbon-tax money is that there will be another workshop sometime later in the year to brainstorm ideas on how to use it.

Let’s light up that midnight oil again …