Environmental sustainability in basic research. A perspective from HECAP+

Journal article

The climate crisis and the degradation of the world's ecosystems require humanity to take immediate action. The international scientific community has a responsibility to limit the negative environmental impacts of basic research. The HECAP+ communities (High Energy Physics, Cosmology, Astroparticle Physics, and Hadron and Nuclear Physics) make use of common and similar experimental infrastructure, such as accelerators and observatories, and rely similarly on the processing of big data. Our communities therefore face similar challenges to improving the sustainability of our research. This document aims to reflect on the environmental impacts of our work practices and research infrastructure, to highlight best practice, to make recommendations for positive changes, and to identify the opportunities and challenges that such changes present for wider aspects of social responsibility.

Authors: Banerjee, S; Chen, TY; David, C; Düren, M; Erbin, H

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• Journal: Journal of Instrumentation
• Volume: 20
• Issue: 03
• Article number: P03012
• Publication date: 2025-03-11
• Acceptance date: 2024-05-13
• DOI: 10.1088/1748-0221/20/03/p03012
• EISSN: 1748-0221
• Language: English
• Keywords: Computing (architecture, farms, GRID for recording, storage, archiving, and distribution of data); Software architectures (event data models, frameworks and databases); Performance of High Energy Physics Detectors; Large detector-systems performance