The Climate Emergency: can Particle Physics ever be sustainable?

Speaker: Professor Veronique Boisvert, Royal Holloway, University of London

We live in a climate emergency and consequently, all countries are putting in place measures to reduce their carbon emissions in order to reach a so-called “net zero emissions” by 2050. All aspects of economic life will be affected by such measures, including particle physics research. I will present some examples of sources of carbon emissions within the field of particle physics. This will include emissions associated with building and running accelerators, detector operations, high-performance computing and activities associated with our research life like travel. I will also present solutions being developed for addressing this in the near and long term as well as recommendations for the field.