Environmental work

Our environmental approach

Environmental friendliness and sustainability are important at the Tjärnö Laboratory; we have been environmentally certified since 2004. Our boats run on eco-fuel, we heat our facilities with seawater through heat pumps, we have solar cells on our roofs and through a variety of other ways strive to minimize our environmental impact. For instance, we use Remotely Operated Vehicles equipped with cameras to observe the sea floor as a way of study sensitive organisms without harming them. The captains on our research vessel Nereus optimize routes and speed in order to reduce fuel consumption, thus lowering costs and CO₂ emissions.

Environmental activities

Based on the environmental targets and strategies for the University of Gothenburg we work with different activities specific for the Tjärnö Laboratory in purpose of reaching the goals. The activities are decided by the combined environmental work and health and safety group at the Tjärnö Laboratory.

At the moment we are focusing in three areas:

• We give possibilities for good hybrid meetings, among others a reconstruction of parts of the library into meeting rooms has been realized.
• We install solar panels on the dining hall building.
• We are planning for a new research vessel to replace Nereus. The process is on-going.

A lot of our environmental work is accomplished in collaboration with Akademiska Hus, our property owner.

Annually we are following the development of our environmental impact and work on a long-term basis to reduce it the negative part of it. Results from previous years:

Energy production from recently installed solar panels was unclear during 2023 but is expected to give clear results during following years. As with all laboratory operations, energy useage is relatively high. Average across the entire university was 178 kWh/m² during 2023.

Sampling at sea is an essential part of marine research, education and public outreach. Nevertheless, at Tjärnö we are reducing the amount of bottom dredging by replacing some of these operations with the use of ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles) to lower the environmental impact.

The number of virtual meetings has decreased after the pandemic years, but is still significantly higher than in 2019, which acts as a baseline. (One meeting here is defined as at least 3 persons over at least 15 minutes.) Virtual meetings have become a critical function, both as meetings but also in some teaching, especially for activities outside the Gothenburg area.

Environmental Handbook

There are routines common for all departments concerning, for example, handling of chemicals and waste in order to decrease the risk of negative environmental impact.

For the environmental work at Tjärnö Marine Laboratory there are also special routines concerning ships, aquaria, sampling and foreign species for example, see below.

Environmental Audits

Every year there are both internal and external environmental audits performed at the university. Tjärnö Laboratory is audited every third year. At the audits the activities at the field stations are reviewed from several different perspectives. Do we comply with environmental legislation? Do we comply with the environmental standard ISO 14001 requirements? Do we comply with our own routines and rules?

Environmental Coordination

Every department or unit has one or two environmental coordinators in the Faculty Environmental Council. The environmental coordinators work with the activities that ultimately aims at reaching the environmental goals. From Tjärnö Laboratory Ullika Lundgren participates in the council.