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How to assess the carbon footprint of a large-scale physics project

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Large-scale projects have become increasingly important in physics. They are also a source of greenhouse gas emissions. Clarisse Aujoux, Odile Blanchard and Kumiko Kotera describe how to use transparent, open data to estimate these emissions — the first step in taking effective action to reduce them.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the GRAND Collaboration. This work was supported by the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, and by the APACHE grant (ANR-16-CE31-0001) of the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche.

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Correspondence to Kumiko Kotera.

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Aujoux, C., Blanchard, O. & Kotera, K. How to assess the carbon footprint of a large-scale physics project. Nat Rev Phys 3, 386–387 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-021-00325-2

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