Public Bodies Climate Change Duties - College and university submissions 2024/25: analysis and recommendations
November 2025 was the tenth year for Scottish colleges and universities to submit their mandatory Public Bodies Climate Change Duties (PBCCD) reports to the 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. These reports are available to download via the menu on the right hand side of this page. Key trends and sector recommendations are summarised below.
Key trends
Emissions reporting and analysis
- The sector continues to improve the quality of its PBCCD submissions to the Scottish Government, especially with regards to scope 3 emissions. 95% of institutions are now reporting business travel emissions, 70% are reporting supply chain emissions and 30% are reporting student relocation emissions.
- Total reported operational emissions reduced by 7% compared to 2023/24 and 28% compared to 2015/16. 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. This trend has been driven by reductions in emissions from electricity use and a significant reduction in natural gas use in the college sector.
- Total reported greenhouse gas emissions for the sector reduced 8% compared to 2023/24. Reduced numbers of international students studying at Scottish universities, and reduced spend on goods and services by institutions led to reductions in reported student relocation emissions (-34%) and scope 3 supply chains (-8%), despite more institutions reporting their emissions from these sources.
- University business travel emissions from flights have reduced 18.5% since 2018/19. However, the sector-level driver for this change has been efficiency from airlines, resulting in fewer emissions per kilometre travelled. 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.
Climate risk and adaptation analysis
- 60% of the sector evidenced “No assessment” or “Limited assessment” of climate risk in 2024/25. This is a significant reduction from 83% just two years ago and is consistent across both college and university sectors.
Sector recommendations
Colleges and universities should:
- Position themselves as planned opportunists when it comes to estates decarbonisation. This means understanding as clearly as possible their future estate needs, and the feasibility of and desired routes to estates and operations decarbonisation. Institutions with this understanding and evidence in place will be in an improved position to access decarbonisation funding as and when it is available.
- Clearly identify gaps in their emissions reporting and put in place processes to report these emissions in future PBCCD reports and within a reasonable timeframe - e.g. reporting of all additional scope 1 emissions within 12 months, and all relevant scope 3 emissions within 24 months.
- Dedicate time to understand both current and future climate risk, in line with the Scottish Government’s and Climate Change Committee’s advice of adapt to 2°c of global warming and assess risks for up to 4°c. Risk assessments and adaptation action should consider the functions of the institution holistically, covering estates and infrastructure, operations and people.
Next steps
EAUC Scotland will soon launch 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, we will also be updating relevant resources including:
Our annual group PBCCD peer review session will take place in October 2026 ahead of submissions in November.
If you have any questions or feedback on the reports and our resources, please contact scotland@eauc.org.uk.
All individual institutional PBCCD reports are available on the Sustainable Scotland Network website.
