Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A research group uses GES 1point5 to publish its annual carbon footprint by category and sets a 30 percent reduction target by 2030.
- Is an instance
A funder mandates a project-level carbon estimate at proposal stage for any grant over 1 million pounds.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A single energy-bill total for an entire campus is not a research-specific footprint.
- Not an instance
A travel-only count ignoring procurement is incomplete.
Editorial commentary
A research carbon footprint totals the greenhouse-gas emissions (in CO2-equivalent) attributable to a defined unit of research activity — a single project, a lab group, a department, or an institution — across its main contributing categories: laboratory and facility energy use, computing (on-premises or cloud), procurement of consumables and equipment, travel (fieldwork and conferences), and, increasingly, end-of-life disposal of equipment. It is generally structured using the GHG Protocol’s scope 1 (direct, e.g. on-site fuel combustion), scope 2 (purchased electricity and heat), and scope 3 (everything else in the value chain — procurement, travel, waste) framework, and in research-intensive settings scope 3 typically dominates the total, driven mainly by procurement and travel rather than direct energy use.
How it’s measured
Purpose-built calculators exist because generic corporate carbon-accounting tools do not map well onto research-specific categories like reagent procurement or compute allocation. GES 1point5, developed by the French CNRS-affiliated Labos 1point5 collective, is a widely used self-assessment tool that lets a research group tabulate its footprint by category and publish or benchmark the result; other institutional tools plug into procurement and travel-booking systems to estimate spend-based emissions. Estimates are necessarily approximate — spend-based procurement factors in particular carry wide uncertainty bands — so results are best used to identify the largest contributing category and track relative change over time, rather than treated as an audited figure.
Where it shows up in research administration
A project-level estimate increasingly appears as a required climate impact statement at proposal stage under climate-aware funding policies, and an institution-level figure feeds statutory reporting regimes such as the UK’s Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) and the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) for universities within scope. See carbon accounting (research) for the underlying accounting mechanics and compute carbon footprint for the computing-specific subset.
What’s out of scope
A single whole-campus energy-bill total is not a research-specific footprint unless it has been apportioned to research activity; a travel-only tally that omits procurement is a partial, not complete, estimate.
References
- GHG Protocol Corporate Standard; GES 1point5 project (CNRS / Labos 1point5).
Also known as
Research GHG footprint · Academic carbon footprint
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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