Estimate of the carbon footprint of astronomical research infrastructures

TL;DR

This paper estimates the carbon footprint of astronomical research infrastructures, highlighting their significant contribution and discussing ways to reduce emissions for sustainability.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive estimate of the carbon footprint of astronomical space missions and observatories, including infrastructure contributions.

Findings

Worldwide astronomical infrastructures emit about 20.3 MtCO₂e annually.

Each astronomer is associated with approximately 36.6 tons of CO₂e emissions per year.

Research infrastructures are the largest single contributor to astronomers' carbon footprint.

Abstract

The carbon footprint of astronomical research is an increasingly topical issue with first estimates of research institute and national community footprints having recently been published. As these assessments have typically excluded the contribution of astronomical research infrastructures, we complement these studies by providing an estimate of the contribution of astronomical space missions and ground-based observatories using greenhouse gas emission factors that relates cost and payload mass to carbon footprint. We find that worldwide active astronomical research infrastructures currently have a carbon footprint of 20.3$\pm$3.3 MtCO$_2$ equivalent (CO$_2$e) and an annual emission of 1,169$\pm$249 ktCO$_2$e yr$^{-1}$ corresponding to a footprint of 36.6$\pm$14.0 tCO$_2$e per year per astronomer. Compared with contributions from other aspects of astronomy research activity, our results suggest that research infrastructures make the single largest contribution to the carbon footprint of an astronomer. We discuss the limitations and uncertainties of our method and explore measures that can bring greenhouse gas emissions from astronomical research infrastructures towards a sustainable level.