NOVA University Lisbon has just released its Sustainability Report for 2024, under the slogan “Leading change for people and the planet”. The document presents the University’s main advances in the field of sustainability, highlighting the active role it has been playing in promoting responsible, inclusive and environmentally conscious practices.
On the environmental front, it is worth highlighting the strengthening of greenhouse gas emissions monitoring through the NOVA Route Zero project and the InNOVA digital platform, which allows data to be tracked across all the University’s organisational units.
This measure represents a decisive step towards carbon neutrality, which is planned for 2040. Since 2019, electricity consumption at NOVA has decreased by 14%, benefiting from a more sustainable national energy matrix, with 71% of renewable energy in the Portuguese electricity grid. This development contributed to a 15% reduction in direct emissions in 2024, compared to the previous year.
Although the NOVA Zero Waste was very active along 2024, including bringing together municipalities and waste entities to co-design better recycling and composting systems, NOVA global recycling rate decrease which challenge us to take more effective and bolder actions, and make this a top priority to act with the community, as FCT has doing with NUDGE, a start-up focusing on students’ behaviour.
On a social level, in 2024 the University launched Rede 1/4, an innovative initiative that aims to respond to the housing crisis affecting university students in Portugal. The programme connects people with available rooms and students looking for affordable accommodation, promoting a collaborative and supportive response to a structural problem.
The report also presents how these initiatives are linked to the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), highlighting the contribution of NOVA’s different Schools to building a fairer, greener and more resilient future — from eradicating poverty to promoting clean energy and climate action.
The full report is available online and offers a comprehensive overview of the impact of research, teaching and innovation developed at NOVA on the sustainable transformation of society.