Header

Search
Sustainability

Local mobility

In the Implementation Strategy 2030 for the Sustainability Policy, UZH reaffirms its efforts to reduce GHG emissions from commuting by its members and from internal delivery traffic between UZH locations. Emissions from local mobility, as well as those from air travel, are part of the system limit for UZH's climate neutrality target.

Current information on local mobility can be found in the Sustainability Report.
Sustainability Report

Table of contents

Commuting

Commuter traffic generated 3'866 t CO2e in 2023, which corresponds to an increase of less than 1 percent compared to 2018. In order to promote low-emission public transport for commuting to the university campus in line with UZH's sustainability policy, new parking regulations with higher fares came into force in 2023. This significantly reduced the number of parking permits issued.
Since 2022, employees have been able to work up to 40 percent location-independently thanks to the mobile working model. This can make an important contribution to reducing commuting.
UZH has had a Mobility Manager since 2024. The Mobility Manager and the UZH Sustainability Hub are jointly developing further measures to optimize the contribution of commuting to UZH's climate neutrality target.

Top

UZH vehicle fleet

The UZH vehicle fleet was responsible for emissions of 94 t CO2e in 2023. This includes energy supply (petrol and diesel), vehicle maintenance, vehicle production and disposal as well as the infrastructure. The energy consumption and corresponding emissions of fully electric and plug-in hybrid cars are not yet recorded separately, but are included in UZH's energy requirements if they are charged via the UZH power grid.

Stacked bar chart of fuel consumption from 2028 to 2024 by the UZH's own vehicle fleet in liters, each bar contains consumption of diesel and gasoline, diesel share higher in each case, consumption fluctuates over the years, but tends to decrease; Energy supply (gasoline and diesel), vehicle maintenance, vehicle production and disposal, and the track infrastructure are taken into account. The consumption of 62 vehicles from the UZH vehicle fleet (operational services, animal hospital, botanical garden, Institute of Plant and Microbiology, Department of Materials and Logistics, Department of Safety and Environment) and 9 vehicles from the ASVZ (jointly with ETHZ) is shown. Not included: other vehicles at institutes and transport by third-party providers.
Graphic: Melanie Lindner

Shared use of vehicles

The UZH vehicle fleet management system includes sustainability requirements for the procurement and operation of vehicles and is intended to promote the shared use of vehicles in the future. The gradual introduction of automatic data collection for the UZH fleet began in 2022 to enable the shared use of vehicles within UZH and thus better vehicle utilization. Currently, many UZH vehicles are still managed individually. Only around half of the vehicles are listed centrally; a significant proportion of business trips are also made with vehicles from external service providers.

Sustainable goods logistics

With a cross-location logistics vision (incl. implementation strategy), the aim is to transform UZH's previously fragmented and heterogeneous logistics into sustainable goods logistics using the possibilities of digitalization and in the course of the major renovation and new construction projects.

Top

Source: Parts of this text were originally published in a similar form in German in the Sustainability Report 2021/2022 and have been continuously updated for this website.