Roadmap developed for greener data science

A pioneering award scheme is empowering researchers to reduce the carbon footprint of research projects involving large amounts of data and computing power.

Green DiSC awards scheme image
Green DiSC Sustainability Awards Scheme. Credit- Software Sustainability Institute (SSI)

The initiative, known as Green DiSC, is the first open access and free certification scheme for institutions aiming to mitigate the environmental impacts of their computational research. 

Sustainability goals

Hosted by the University of Edinburgh’s Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) and developed in partnership with the University of Cambridge, Green DiSC provides a roadmap for scientists to better meet their sustainability goals.

Six research groups from across Europe have become the first recipients of a Green DiSC certification, having completed the Bronze criteria.

Environmental impacts 

Certification schemes have long helped research laboratories reduce their environmental impacts but up to now there has been no equivalent scheme for the rapidly growing field of computational research.

The need is increasingly urgent in a world where high performance computing, AI and large datasets produce more greenhouse gas emissions per year than the aviation sector, experts say.

Bronze certification

In June 2024, Green DiSC launched its Bronze criteria, the first level of the certification scheme. 

Designed to guide anyone working in research across any domain, Bronze lays out the initial steps to embed sustainability into team activities – from their training resources to their  hardware, data storage and computing infrastructure.

Successful teams

In this first round, the scheme recognised four research groups for embedding sustainability into their practices, and two support teams for facilitating sustainable research across their organisations. 

The successful teams included the Breast Cancer Research Data Science Team, The Institute of Cancer Research’s Scientific Computing Team and the Laboratory of Computational Genomics, University of Pavia, Italy.

The next deadline to apply for certification is the 19 November 2025.

Digital research has a growing environmental footprint, but there’s not a lot of guidance on how to reduce it. The Green DiSC certification gives researchers clear, practical steps to improve the sustainability of their work.

It is wonderful to see the first round of certified teams after more than two years developing and testing Green DiSC. It is inspiring to see the research community stepping up and signaling that we cannot afford to ignore the environmental impacts of our digital research.

 

We're incredibly excited to see the development of Green-DiSC, as this programme addresses an area of increasing importance for us and the research sector. We look forward to supporting this work in the future.

Tags

2025
Climate and Environmental Crisis
Data, Digital and AI