Reducing the carbon footprint of a public research laboratory in Geosciences. Assessing a reduction strategy built with laboratory members after a 3-year experimentation

• Main Authors: Pellarin, Thierry, Champollion, Nicolas, Gratiot, Nicolas, Teran-Escobar, Claudia, Ruin, Isabelle, Panthou, Geremy, Hingray, Benoit, Delaygue, Gilles, Jager, Eliot, Lamothe, Alexis, Piton, Guillaume, Evin, Guillaume, Blanchet, Juliette, Philippon, Nathalie, Philip, Armelle, Martinerie, Patricia, Picard, Ghislain
• Other Authors: Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement (IGE), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE)-Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)-Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP ), Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA), Laboratoire Parisien de Psychologie Sociale (LAPPS), Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis (UP8)-Université Paris Nanterre (UPN), Psychologie sociale des comportements et des cognitions (PS2C), Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis (UP8)-Université Paris Nanterre (UPN)-Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis (UP8)-Université Paris Nanterre (UPN), Université Paris Nanterre (UPN), Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE), Observatoire des Sciences de l'Univers de Grenoble (OSUG ), Erosion torrentielle neige et avalanches (UR ETGR (ETNA)), Risques gravitaires et cryosphère en montagne (ECRINS), Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE)-Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)-Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP ), Université Joseph Fourier - Grenoble 1 (UJF), University of Sheffield Sheffield, Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier (UT3), Université de Toulouse (UT)
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2023
• Subjects: [SDE]Environmental Sciences; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-04648692; https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-13694

International audience The Institute of Environmental Geosciences (IGE) is a public research laboratory in Earth and Environmental Sciences with a staff of about 300 people, which conducts research on climate, the anthropisation of our planet and environmental risks, combining glaciology, hydrology, oceanography, mechanics, atmospheric sciences and human sciences. An important part of its activity consists of field experiments in remote sites (Antarctica, Asia, South America, Africa), numerical simulations using significant computer resources (several million CPU hours/year), using expensive and sometimes energy intensive scientific equipment (e.g. 170 m² of cold rooms).In 2019, the laboratory collectively decided to adopt a strategy to reduce its Carbon Footprint (CFP) by 7% per year in order to achieve a 50% reduction by 2030 and thus to comply with the objectives of the Paris Agreement. The first CFP budget (2018 and 2019, using the GES1point5 tool) showed a predominance of emissions from professional travels (~640 tCO2e out of 1850 tCO2e, i.e. 2.6 tCO2e/person). In this context, the strategy consisted in defining CO2 budgets for each of the 8 research teams of the IGE on the basis of the 2018/2019 emissions, imposing a 10% reduction per year from 2020. Given the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, the reduction targets for professional travel were easily achieved (-81% and -64%) and the reduction in 2022 was -39% compared to 2018/2019 instead of the targeted -27%.For all emission items (commuting, professional travel, heating, electricity, digital computing, purchasing, refrigerants), the reduction was -45% in 2020, -30% in 2021 and -15% in 2022. To consider the evolution of the number of people in the laboratory (and in the teams), the mean individual CFP has been defined as the ratio between the CO2 emissions and the number of people in the laboratory. The IGE's mean individual CFP was 7.22 tCO2e/person in 2018/2019 and 5.45 tCO2e/person in 2022 (for a target of 6.0 tCO2/person). It should be 3.61 tCO2e/person in ...