September 2025 Newsletter
As we enter into October, we’re back with the September release of the ESCS newsletter!
Every month, we highlight news, tools, and resources in the intersection of environmental sustainability and computational science. From project announcements and policy developments to jobs and funding opportunities, we’re rounding up the latest that we think the community would find interesting and useful.
To keep things relevant, we want to hear from you! We encourage you to engage with the community on the ESCS Forum, chime into a topic, or start your own thread. And of course, any suggestions to make our newsletter even better, let us know.
If someone has forwarded this newsletter to you and you are interested to receive more, you can subscribe here.
September Recap of the ESCS Community Forum
News & Resources 📰
- Measuring and awarding data centre sustainability. Some more positive news on the data centre front:
- This article argues for more holistic data centre sustainability, accounting for other atmospheric emissions including chemicals and metals aside from CO2, as these can lead to secondary pollutants when interacting with one another.
- Did you know data centres can receive awards for sustainability? The Green Building Initiative (GBI) awarded its Green Globe for New Construction certification to tech infra company Aligned Data Centers for its latest data centre facility in Phoenix, USA, noting the facility’s strategies for reduced water usage, efficient cooling, 100% renewable power, and Adaptive Modular Infrastructure (AMI) which cuts down on scope 3 emissions (link).
👉 Join the discussion on the forum
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From IEEE Spectrum: The Real Story on AI’s Water Use–and How to Tackle It > Cutting AI water use means smarter cooling and less thirsty grids. Article from University of California Associate Professor Shaolei Ren and Microsoft’s AI and Sustainability Lead Amy Luers discusses how regions with high concentration of data centres are actually impacted by water shortages, and what are some of the available solutions.
👉 Join the discussion on the forum -
What big tech data centre development looks like for countries like Mexico: “temporary” reliance on gas generators. Rest of the World article on how big tech is powering the rapid expansion of data centres around the world. Because many national power grids face or will face a deficit, companies are resorting to gas. And even if this was truly a temporary power source, we still see that nearly 60% of electricity used around the world comes from fossil fuels (link).
👉 Join the discussion on the forum - Fastest supercomputer from Germany and new open-source LLM in Switzerland - is running on renewables enough? These two projects are both advertising that they run on 100% renewable energy - Jupiter paying to only use renewables from Germany’s grid, and Apertus on Switzerland’s, making both models, on paper, carbon-neutral. But is that really enough to erase potential negative environmental impacts, given the scale of their power demand?
👉 Join the discussion on the forum
Q&A Discussions 💬
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Environmentally Sustainable HeAlth REsearch (SHARE) is looking for researchers! The SHARE project, led by Dr Gabby Samuel (King’s College London) and Dr Federica Lucivero (University of Oxford), are recruiting health researchers from the UK to be interviewed on environmental tools such as carbon accounting methods and accreditation systems. These will be 45-60 minute interviews, and participants will receive a £20 voucher as a token of appreciation. Check the online form to learn more.
👉 Join the discussion on the forum -
New material from members of the ESCS community on Green Computing induction material. Are you looking for educational resources to share with your team to get them involved in more sustainable computing practices? Check out these resources used by community members from EMBL and the EPCC (link)
👉 Join the discussion on the forum -
Free Green HPC course for those in academe! Shared by Andy Turner on the forum, the University of Birmingham is hosting the next Green HPC course on 22 October 2025. No prior knowledge of environmental sustainability concepts required!
👉 Join the discussion on the forum -
We had a question in the forum last year from Andrew Walker on what the per CU estimate of the CO2 cost of running calculations on ARCHER2 is. Thanks to Andy Turner for chiming into the discussion (20g CO2e per CU if you’re curious!) and sharing a resource.
👉 Join the discussion on the forum
Got a question about green computing? Or want to share a useful resource with others? Check out the ESCS Forum! 🗒️
We love seeing new members and posts on the ESCS Community Forum. Doesn’t matter if you’re new and want to learn more about sustainable compute, or are considered the “expert” in your team. We’re glad to have you in our community! You can ask questions and chime in other discussions. Our Community Manager, Anica, follows what goes on in the forum every week, so your post may get featured in the next newsletter! 🌱
🌱 What is this newsletter? This aims to be a round up of interesting news and developments in the sustainable computing space. Whenever we come across an interesting news item or publication on the topic, we will post it on the forum so that everyone can jump in and discuss it. Of course anyone’s welcome to post as well! At the end of each month, we will send out this monthly digest of the articles shared and of the discussions that happened on the forum.
🌱 Who is behind the forum and this monthly digest? This project is led by Loïc Lannelongue at the University of Cambridge and supported by the Wellcome Trust (among others). Anica Araneta is in charge of day-to-day community management. Any questions about that? Just get in touch!