Comprehensive carbon footprint of Earth, environmental and space science laboratories: Implications for sustainable scientific practice

To limit global warming below 2°C, a drastic overall reduction from current green-house gas emissions is needed. Scientists should also participate in this effort in their professional activity and especially Earth scientists, on the grounds of maintaining credibility and leading by example. The strategies and measures to reach a low-carbon scientific activity require detailed estimates of the current footprint of laboratories. Here, we present the footprint of six laboratories in Earth, environmental and space sciences, with a comprehensive scope also including international research infrastructures. We propose a novel method to attribute a part of the footprint of any research infrastructure to the laboratory using it. Our results highlight that most laboratories have annual footprints reaching 10–20 tonnes CO2equivalent per person (tCO2e p-1), dominated by infrastructures and specifically satellites in three cases (with footprints up to 11 tCO2e p-1), while air-travels and purchases remain within the top three sources in all cases (2–4 tCO2e p-1 each). Consequently, footprints related to commuting and laboratory functioning, about 2 tCO2e p-1 or less, are relatively modest compared to infrastructures, purchases and air-travels. Thus, reduction measures ignoring infrastructures may not be able to achieve reductions larger than 20 to 35% even with flight quotas and a substantial reduction of purchases. Finally, we also discuss how a deeper transformation of scientific practices, away from competitive, grant-based and innovation-oriented current practices, could make Earth and environmental sciences more sustainable and at the forefront of rapid and drastic changes in the whole society toward environment and climate preservation.Author summary: To limit global warming below 2°C, a drastic overall reduction from current green-house gas emissions is needed. We argue that scientists should also participate in this effort in their professional activity and especially Earth scientists, on the grounds of maintaining credibility and leading by example. Here, we present the footprint of six laboratories in Earth, environmental and space sciences, with a comprehensive scope also including international research infrastructures. With a novel method to attribute a part of the footprint of a research infrastructure to the research laboratories using this infrastructure, we find that most laboratories have annual footprints reaching 10–20 tonnes CO2 equivalent per person, dominated by infrastructures and satellites in three cases, while air-travels and equipment purchases remain within the top three sources in all cases. In comparison, footprints related to commuting and laboratory functioning, are relatively modest. Thus, reduction measures ignoring infrastructures may not be able to achieve reductions larger than 20 to 35% even with flight quotas and a substantial reduction of purchases. Finally, we also discuss how a deeper transformation of scientific practices could make Earth and environmental sciences more sustainable and at the forefront of a rapid and drastic changes in the whole society toward environment and climate preservation.