Green DiSC: a Digital Sustainability Certification

The Green DiSC certification can help any group that uses computation in their research as well as central sustainability teams. For example:

Groups:

• A fully “dry lab” or computing research group (e.g. computational biology, astrophysics, statistics, machine learning, engineering, chemistry etc.)
• An RSE team.
• A group doing both wet lab and dry lab research.

Central teams:

• Organisation’s central sustainability team
• Department’s sustainability representative
• IT team

High-performance computing (HPC) is an essential component of modern research, and it comes with significant, but not always well-understood, environmental impacts. With the urgency of the climate crisis, it is becoming increasingly apparent to scientists using computing that the resulting environmental effects should be taken into account and mitigated where possible. In the UK, UKRI released last year its roadmap for Net-Zero Digital Infrastructure and more recently, major funders and universities joined the Concordat for the Environmental Sustainability of Research and Innovation Practice. It is now key to give research groups and institutions a framework to achieve these ambitions. 

A few figures: the global carbon footprint of data centres is estimated at ~100 MT CO2e per year (mega tonnes of CO2-equivalent), equivalent to the entire US commercial aviation. It is not uncommon to have scientific computations reaching tonnes of CO2e and some Artificial Intelligence models have been shown to pass 500 T CO2e. For context, the IPCC target to keep global warming under 1.5C is around 2 tonnes per year and per person. 

Contrary to wet labs for example, until now computing groups didn’t have a roadmap on how to tackle the environmental impacts of their work. Green DiSC is addressing this!

We will create a Google Drive space for you (we aim to do that within 48h of you completing the form, but it may take longer). In this drive space, you will find more guidelines on how to manage the scheme and support on working your way through the Bronze level.  

You will also be given access to a closed group on the ESCS Forum to ask questions and connect with other groups taking part, and you will have a point of contact for any question you may have.

Once you’re part of the scheme, it depends slightly on whether you are representing a research group or a central team at your institution.

Either way, you will then have several months to make your way through the criteria. Then, comes the time of getting certified!

Each group/institution taking part will be audited by outside auditors to receive the certification. This will mostly be achieved through peer audit: each group taking part will commit to audit other groups. Why?

• Because this is a great opportunity to learn what is being done elsewhere.
• Because the certification scheme is free to enrol, but not free to run, and community-based auditing is a good way to keep a low barrier to entry.

The audit will involve reviewing the written application for the Bronze criteria, followed by a meeting (online for Bronze) to discuss these and ask for clarification.

Is there a cost to joining?

No, there is no fee to joining the scheme and to get certified, and the criteria themselves are open-access (no paywall!).

Why are there no criteria about sustainability outside of computing?

There are other schemes which do a great job at tackling things like food waste, building’s heating, travel policy etc. With Green DiSC, we decided to focus on computing so that it can be completed alongside one of these schemes if you want to be exhaustive! 

Any other questions?

Check out the recording and slides of our first information webinar.

The best place to ask questions about this scheme is the dedicated space on the ESCS community forum, but if you’d rather message privately, you can email us at info@greendisc.org.