Changes to travel procedures focus on reducing emissions, advancing climate action

Faculty and staff who travel frequently for university business will notice some changes to travel procedures.

In addition to moving to a paperless pre-approval process (Request), an updated interface to the Concur Travel and Expense Reimbursement System (Concur) should make the experience of detailing expenses more straightforward and easier to itemize.

But UB also wants to make the campus aware that, as part of the pre-approval process, travelers will now be asked to certify they are mindful of the university’s goal of achieving climate neutrality and its 10 in 10-climate action strategy — a roadmap toward net zero emissions by 2030.

One of those key 10 strategies is focused on pricing carbon and working to factor in the cost of emissions across the university.

“The strategy we’re really putting forth right now is awareness — just getting the campus community aware that when we travel, that has carbon emissions,” says Beth Corry, university controller and associate vice president for business services, who leads the pricing carbon work at UB.

“Then, we can over time determine how we work to mitigate those emissions,” Corry says.

This change to the travel procedures is another step toward getting a better accounting of the university’s mobility footprint and rethinking its travel habits, says Ryan McPherson, chief sustainability officer. Greenhouse gases generated by travel and mobility are now UB’s single largest source of carbon emissions.

The Pricing Carbon Group at UB is doing “fantastic work in thinking through how we balance environmental stewardship, the time of our faculty and staff, and the overall cost of travel,” McPherson says.

“We are not saying don’t travel,” McPherson says. “There are important reasons for our community to travel that help advance UB’s mission.”

In-person meetings and gatherings provide value that is often absent from virtual meetings, McPherson says. Social interaction, unintentional academic collisions that lead to innovation and creativity, the ability to stay focused in longer interactions and the importance of building relationships and networking are just a few critical factors that help justify mobility, he adds.

“Still, there is also a cost to this travel that affects time, money and the environment,” McPherson says.

The freeze on travel during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic was an opportune time to reflect on future business travel and whether, in some cases, video conferencing might suffice.

McPherson and Corry reason that, when making travel decisions, money, time, and specifically the climate-related costs, need to be fully evaluated in a “triple bottom line analysis” — examining the social, environmental and financial impacts.

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that much of our traditional mobility may not be as necessary or vital as once thought, they say. The past two years have provided new data and experiences to weigh when working to answer if travel is necessary.

In recent weeks, The Pricing Carbon group, Business Services and Human Resources have been communicating the changes to travel procedures, which took effect Aug. 29.

“There’s really three changes from the business perspective,” says Jonathan Hulbert, organizational change management specialist in the Office of Organizational Development and Effectiveness.

One, Concur is going through an upgrade that will make the system easier to use and navigate, Hulbert says.

Two, requests for travel will now be made digitally through Concur, he says. Traditionally, faculty or staff traveling on an overnight trip were expected to seek pre-approval from their supervisor by filling out a request on paper.

And three is the addition of the sustainability component, which simply acknowledges that employees understand their role in taking some responsibility for the university’s climate-action plan and will be climate conscious as travelers, Hulbert says.

For more information, staff and faculty can review the travel website or contact the business officer for their unit.