Queen Mary is committed to supporting the Government’s ambition of reaching net zero by 2050, both by mitigating the net-negative impacts of our operations and accelerating the net-positive contributions we make through education, research and engagement. We continue to further develop our whole institutional long-term Sustainability Action Plan following the Strategy 2030 refresh process, and we will monitor our institutional activities against the UN SDGs.
Queen Mary is placed 31st in the 2023/24 People & Planet University League and 54th in the QS World University Rankings for Sustainability 2024. While this represents a significant improvement on previous rankings, we recognise the need to identify areas for continued improvement to address the climate emergency.
Queen Mary continues to actively support and engage locally with Tower Hamlets Council climate action initiatives. This includes being a partner in the Climate Partnership Network and subgroups, spanning biodiversity, innovation, leadership and research.
A breakdown of our 2018/19 carbon footprint show that our business travel (31.9 Million km) accounted for 38.2% of our carbon footprint, with the remaining 61.8% from the energy and water usage used across our UK campuses.
The energy used across our UK campuses accounts for 61.8% of our 2018/19 carbon footprint. Only 33% of our 55 qualifying buildings currently achieve Display Energy Certificate (DEC) scores of C and above, which implies that there are opportunities to improve the energy performances of our buildings.
Our Environmental Sustainability Action Plan details some of the energy efficiency projects and initiatives that were recently completed and commissioned across our campuses. These projects were projected to reduce our electricity and gas use by 6,907,417 kWh and 1,710,999 kWh, respectively.