EAUC publishes Scottish college and university PBCCD analysis reports

November 2025 was the tenth year for Scottish colleges and universities to submit their mandatory Public Bodies Climate Change Duties (PBCCD) reports to Scottish Government. 
 
EAUC Scotland, as part of its Scottish Funding Council-funded programme, has produced reports analysing 2024/25's submissions and providing recommendations and proposed actions for institutions.  

Matt Woodthorpe, Scotland Director says:

“It’s great to have the resource from Scottish Funding Council to be able to complete these analysis reports. They provide a touchpoint each year to assess institutional and sector progress against key parts of the Public Bodies Climate Change Duties, identify effective practice that can enable shared learning, and highlight to the sector and key stakeholders such as SFC and Scottish Government some of the really ‘sticky’ areas of sustainability.” 

Some key highlights

A marked improvement 

On the whole, the college and university sector continues to improve the quality of PBCCD submissions to the Scottish Government, especially in relation to reporting of scope 3 emission sources and evidencing stronger understanding of their specific climate risk.  

For emissions reporting, this is evidenced by 95% of institutions now reporting business travel emissions, 70% reporting supply chain emissions and 30% reporting student relocation emissions.  

For evidencing understanding of climate risk, 60% of the sector evidenced “No assessment” or “Limited assessment” in 2024/25 compared to 83% just two years ago. This is consistent across both college and university sectors.  

Operational emissions drop significantly 

Total reported operational emissions¹ reduced by 7% compared to 2023/24 and reduced 28% compared to 2015/16. This was largely driven by significant reductions in emissions from electricity use and a significant reduction in natural gas use specifically in the college sector.  
 
Total reported greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the sector reduced 8% compared to 2023/24. This was largely due to reductions in reported student relocation emissions (-34%) and scope 3 supply chains (-8%), despite more institutions reporting emissions from these resources. This reflects the impacts of reduced numbers of international students studying at Scottish universities, and reduced spend on goods and services by institutions. 

The sector needs consistent, multi-year heat decarbonisation funding 

Emissions from natural gas have reduced only 3% compared to the previous year and reduced 9% compared to 2015/16. There is a stark emission target and response gap for the sector, which underlines the need for institutions to improve building energy management and space utilisation, combined with access to significant and consistent heat decarbonisation funding streams. 
 
The college sector shows that significant progress can be made when there is access to adequate funding streams. Since 2021, 9 colleges have received a total £23.7m for energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation projects through the Scottish Green Public Sector Estate Decarbonisation Scheme. This has helped the college sector to reduce natural gas emissions by 11% compared to the previous year and 20% compared to 2015/16. 

Universities are still checked-in with flights 

University business travel emissions from flights have reduced 18.5% since 2018/19. On the face of it, this is great progress. However, the sector-level driver for this change has been efficiency from airlines, resulting in fewer emissions per kilometre travelled. For example, the conversion factor reduced 19.3% and 21.9% for short-haul and long-haul flights, respectively, between 2018/19 and 2024/25. 

As a result, it is expected that total flight distance travelled by the sector has largely remained similar for this reporting year to the last pre-COVID-19 year with no significant structural or behaviour change shift observed. This feels a missed opportunity with the expectation from Scottish Government that universities embed sustainability in operations, including research and internationalisation activities, combined with forced operational changes because of COVID-19 travel restrictions.  

Supporting your journey - EAUC’s next steps 

Later this month, we will be launching a digitised version of the Air Travel Justification Tool (originally published 2020) to help academics reflect on attending a conference, meeting or event that is only accessible through flying. 

In addition, this summer, EAUC Scotland will update relevant resources including: 

• Commuting survey guide and emissions tool 

• Domestic and international student relocation travel emissions calculator 

• APUC scope 3 emissions reporting guide 

• Climate risk register guide and tool 

We will also be holding our group PBCCD peer review session in October 2026 ahead of submissions in November. 

If you have any questions or feedback on the reports or our resources, please contact scotland@eauc.org.uk.

All individual institutional PBCCD reports are available on the Sustainable Scotland Network website. 

¹ EAUC Scotland defines “operational emissions” as all scope 1 and 2 emissions, as well as scope 3 emissions from energy transmission and distribution, water supply and treatment, waste, business travel, hotel stays and homeworking.