Travel Guidelines

The CERN SY Department subscribes to the urgent need to reduce society’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions rapidly in accordance with the goals of the Paris climate agreement as stated in the CERN environment report. At the same time, we recognise international exchange as necessary to scientific and technological progress and strive to provide excellent conditions for researchers at CERN and beyond, in particular promoting young scientists and engineers. This document provides some guidelines on achieving these goals, consciously balancing scientific value and environmental cost.

Where possible we consider hybrid and online talks best practice, and will continue to offer this format for seminars and conferences organised by CERN SY. But we also fully acknowledge the value of in-person interaction for exchange and collaboration. The best format for the goals of a given event needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, taking also into account that online events can offer broader access to the larger community.

For duty travel, we critically consider the value of each business trip and will replace it by a virtual meeting when this is adequate for the needs. We aim to maximise the value of each in-person trip, considering for example a longer stay to combine with other visits or objectives like outreach.

When travel is necessary, we recognise that the GHG emissions of air travel are many times higher than travel by train for trips within Europe. We request the use of trains whenever possible and offer financial support from the Department where this is more expensive. When air travel is necessary, we encourage the use of a GHG emission calculator to compare the environmental cost of different flight options.

We plan to systematically quantify and monitor the GHG emissions related to the operations of CERN SY, evaluating and improving our measures for GHG reduction.