Looking up

5-year scientific prospective reports of CNRS national institutes were published today, and I quickly read through that of my current national institute, INSU (Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers). I thought I would share some quick thoughts on the section on the reduction of the “environmental impact” of research – because for once, it is an official report that contains such a section, and a rather detailed one for that matter. Also this section makes for an interesting and comforting read directly relatable to the object of this blog.

For those of you not familiar with the French research institutional pyramid, our Centre for National Scientific Research CNRS is divided into ten national institutes that provide an overall architecture to all scientific fields of research. INSU deals with Universe and geosciences, ranging from internal geophysics, continental surfaces, glaciology, oceanography, atmospheric sciences and of courses astronomy and astrophysics; but also some ecological sciences, although the flagship institute for that is INEE.

Every five year, each research field (e.g. astro) does a prospective exercise to outline directions for the next five years, and to reflect on what is needed to get there (in astro, this is the French equivalent of the US decadal survey, except we do this on a 5-yr basis). But the scientific board of each national institute overseeing these fields also writes its own similar report ahead. These latter reports are at the larger level of the multiple scientific fields within each institute (so not just astro for INSU) and can serve as guidelines to more specialized prospectives. These institutional reports are out and available here, in French (but not to worry, I will translate a few key bits of the INSU one below). I will spare you a detailed analysis but, as I have stated from the very beginning that my transition to ecology reseach was partly motivated by the high environmental impact of astro (versus its direct usefulness to solve the climate and broader ecological crisis), I woud like to highlight a few things from section IV. D, which addresses the issue of the environmental impact of research at INSU (italics/bold in the quotes are my own emphasis)

The first point addressed is that of ongoing efforts to assess the impact of our research, and the report mentions both trans-disciplinary and departmental initiatives. I will just highlight one point here

There are psychological aspects to these “bottom-up” initiatives. They find their roots in a sentiment of cognitive dissonance that sometimes affect the well-being of the people initiating them. Starting actions to reduce the environmental footprint of our research therefore not only responds to the environmental emergency, but also aims at addressing the question of consistency between our results, methods, and work organization, as it is also an issue of quality of life at work.

There is also the issue of the weight of the different activities of our laboratories on their overall environmental footprint, notably those relying on heavy infrastructures such as national HPC centers, large observatories, the CNRS research boat and plane fleets, as well as space missions and satellites. Decarbonizing research activities is not something that can be done purely at the laboratory level, it must involve our large national infrastructures. A minima, we must optimise and reduce energetic consumption, quantity of materials used, activity volume, but more than anything else we must rethink the planning and renewing of such infrastructures ahead of time.

This is possibly the first time I see these two points, which i personally strongly identify with, laid out in an official institutional report in such clear and non-ambiguous terms.

The next point is about “solutions”.

An institutional framework is necessary to accompany laboratories in this transition […] First, we must evaluate the environmental cost of large infrastructures that make the specificity of universe sciences. The carbon footprint of astronomical research infrastructure is very high, that footprint must also be evaluated for the French oceanographic and plane research fleets, space missions, national HPC centers. These efforts are necessary to increase awareness of these issues, and to plan future reduction trajectories […]. In the long term, it’s not just about the CO2 footprint. For instance the future French exascale computer could have an energetic consumption comparable to that of all CNRS laboratories. The gains from such a machine in terms of computation and expected scientific results should be clearly laid out […] We must clearly define and evaluate the benefit of research activities in terms of additional knowledge, results and societal consequences. This is a complex and delicate issue but it is urgent to address it.

We need more consistency and willpower in funding calls to take steps to reduce our environmental footprints, that may go as far as incentive funding to more sustainable projects. Today the general feeling remains that the acquisition of new, more powerful instruments is the only way to obtain funding, and that, conversely, it is very difficult to obtain funding for repair, upgrades, re-use of existing data. Choices between new instruments, vs. upgrades to existing ones, will have to be done. But the development of new instrument and techniques that combine performance and environmental sobriety can be an extremely enthusiasming challenge too.

Here, the first part is quite brutal with a sector I know well, high-performance computing (HPC), and I must say for very justified reasons which I may write about in future posts. The second part I also strongly agree with, except maybe for the wording of the last phrase, which imo leaves the door open to greenwashing, at least within astro. Indeed, I’ve seen several tech/infrastructure enthusiasts stating that of course, their future gigantic project will be done as greenly as possible using all the available green tech and R&D, without asking the very question whether such a project is needed in the first place. This is clearly a deliberate strategy to ram projects and egos through without thinking too much about their true environmental consequences.

This post is already too long, and I cannot discuss here all the points worth discussing in this report section (and the broader report). However, let me discuss one last remarkable statement directly related to this blog’s raison d’être.

As far as research staff is concerned, climate change and adaptation could induce changes in the internal structure of research, favouring more applied work, like climate [prediction/monitoring] “service”. But attribution of resources cannot be done at the expense of more fundamental research.

Some researchers could engage in thematic changes with this type of motivation. Projects of thematic reconversion from high-footprint sectors to weaker-footprint ones must be encouraged. Such reconversions could benefit some domains covered by INSU (e.g. environmental or climate research), but could be problematic for others (e.g. astrophysics & planetology). Hiring could also be affected, with students turning preferentially to low-footprint activities in direct connection with climate or environmental research.

I must say I was quite surprised to read this, because I didn’t think this would yet be recognized as a significant institutional issue in these early days of academic environmental introspection, but it seems it is, at least for the people in this scientific board ! Here too, I can only agree with the conclusion that facilitation / encouragement is necessary, as my own recent experience shows that trying to get funding and support for new projects to make such an interdisciplinary move isn’t necessarily very fluid… Anyways, I see this as a good omen. I also concur with the point regarding students, in fact I have already started to observe and hear about such movements and intentions among new generation students.

To put all of this in perspective though, let me finally stress that this report, and the scientific board that wrote it, have a purely advisory role. And, in the last twenty years, it has been a recurring problem at CNRS that its diverse internal scientific boards most often write sensible things that then go on to be largely ignored at the upper executive and political echelons. I suspect and fear that a lot of these very sensible remarks will meet the same fate. Still, at the personal level, it is good for once to feel in phase with an institutional body and colleagues whose position on such issues is at least read diagonally once by some upper scientific research executives…