Preventing climate change is one of the key priorities of the European Union (EU). This is reflected in its Europe 2020 Strategy, which highlights sustainable growth as one of its priorities, and more recently, in the roadmap of the European Green Deal, where the ambition of having no net emissions of greenhouse gases in Europe by 2050 has been enshrined. Erasmus+ is one of the EU’s main instruments to support growth, jobs, equity and social inclusion, with 400,000 students, trainees and staff going abroad every year. The success of the Erasmus programme has prompted the European Commission to propose doubling the budget of the next Erasmus programme (2021-2027) to EUR 30 billion. If enforced, this would result in an increase in the number of mobilities and in a larger ecological footprint of the programme. While the benefits of spending time abroad for studying, training or teaching on key competences and skills (multilingualism, digital competences, interpersonal skills, sense of European citizenship, cultural awareness and employability) have been well documented, little attention has been paid to the carbon footprint of the Erasmus+ programme. Against this backdrop, and to ensure the sustainable growth of the Erasmus programme, the Erasmus Goes Green (EGG) project aims to reduce the transport-related carbon footprint of higher education students and staff taking part in mobility activities within Europe across the three key actions of the programme. To achieve this, the EGG consortium will develop an IT tool that will allow students and staff to visualise the CO2 footprint of the different means of transport that they can use to go on mobility abroad. The visualisation tool will present them with relevant comparisons, incentives and options to engage in behaviours that minimise and ultimately offset their carbon emissions. Additionally, the EGG consortium will put forward targeted policy recommendations aiming at including environmental principles in the structure of the next Erasmus programme, ensuring systemic change and greener exchanges. Five universities (UVSQ, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Lapland UAS, University of Lodz, Erasmus University of Rotterdam), the largest student network in Europe (ESN) and the European University Foundation (EUF), a network of more than 60 innovative universities spread across Europe, join forces to put this project into practice. The CO2 visualisation tool and the policy recommendations will be the result of four intellectual outputs that will guide the work from the research stage (IO1) to the development, testing and piloting of the IT tool (IO2), the definition and incorporation of incentives and offsetting alternatives (IO3), and the production of guidelines and policy recommendations (IO4) to ensure the dissemination, uptake and long-term impact of the project results. The EGG project will put information at the fingertips of higher education students and staff and empower them to make more conscious and environmentally-friendly decisions when going on mobility abroad. At the same time, it will aim at embedding environmental principles in the core functioning of the Erasmus programme to support the sustainable implementation of its three key actions and the accurate monitoring and offsetting of its CO2 footprint. In doing so, the EGG project will not only increase the environmental awareness of the ultimate beneficiaries of the programme, but also spread good practice examples among higher education institutions and encourage policy makers to embrace sustainable internationalisation strategies. In the short and medium term, this will help to bring the Erasmus programme closer to carbon neutrality, ultimately contributing to the global fight against climate change.
The Erasmus Goes Green (EGG) project aims to reduce the environmental impact of the Erasmus+ programme. Its main objective is to estimate, reduce and offset the carbon footprint of the Erasmus programme. This footprint is directly related to the transportation, within Europe and beyond the EU borders, of higher education students and staff undertaking Erasmus mobility, including those related to transnational project cooperation activities. To reduce this carbon footprint, the Erasmus Goes Green project proposes solutions to better inform higher education students and staff about their carbon footprint and the ecological impact of their choice of transport for their mobility abroad. It also offers solutions to encourage them to minimise and offset their carbon footprint. It is primarily aimed at Erasmus mobility students, but also at managers of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and policy makers. In particular, EGG enables the European Commission to better monitor the environmental impact of the Erasmus programme and to modify the rules of the Erasmus programme in order to reduce or even offset its carbon footprint.
Over the past 150 years, the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere has reached record levels, resulting in an average global temperature increase of 0.85°C. In its 2018 report, the UN-mandated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned governments of the devastating effects that a warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels would have on the planet. If nothing changes, this scenario will become reality within the next 30 years. Combating climate change is one of the European Union's (EU) top priorities. The EU has set itself the target of reducing its GHG emissions by 40% by 2030 and by 90% by 2050. This commitment is enshrined in key EU policies and programmes, such as the Europe 2020 strategy, which makes sustainable growth one of its priorities. However, Erasmus+, one of the EU's main instruments for supporting growth, jobs, equity and social inclusion, has not yet incorporated these sustainable growth objectives. Yet, with two-thirds of its budget allocated to mobility, Erasmus+ has enabled the mobility of around 400,000 students (including trainees) and staff each year from 2014 to 2020. The success of the programme over the past three decades has prompted the EU to almost double the Erasmus budget to €26.2 billion for the years 2021-2027. While the benefits of going abroad to study, train or teach are numerous and well documented, little is known about the carbon footprint of the Erasmus programme, and the measures that could reduce and offset it. As transport is the source of almost a quarter of the EU's GHGs, and aviation is the fastest growing source of transport-related CO2 emissions in the EU, there is a need to integrate environmental issues into the operation of the Erasmus programme. The Erasmus programme is set to be broader, more inclusive and more ambitious, but it can also be a lot greener.