Martin Farley:
Greetings, folks. Thank you so much for this award. It really means a lot, honestly. I've been working around environmental sustainability and research for over a decade now, and NEB genuinely has been one of the companies that's been really a pleasure to work with. And I think you just heard some of the ways, some of the actions that you've taken as a company. So honestly, great work. I also want to say thank you for allowing me to do this talk remotely today. It felt appropriate to accept a sustainability award remotely in that sense in recognition of the emissions associated with air travel. And just to highlight that by kindly allowing me to accept this remotely, we've saved around half of the emissions of the average person per annum. So, I really do appreciate it.
I wanted to give a talk just today about environmental sustainability in science and I wanted to start by taking a step back and where this topic, at least I've seen it originate from. And I wanted to give thanks in particular to this fellow here who sadly passed away just over a year ago. His name was Phil Wirdzek. He founded I2SL, which is based in the US International Institute of Sustainable Labs. And I think it just really makes sense that Phil got a lot of this work around sustainable labs and sustainable research going because he was an EPA bench scientist, and of course, the EPA was considering the environmental impact of his own work.
I heard you mentioned that NEB, a lot of your staff are scientists and so you'll be conscious about science is resource intensive. And so, when we take a step back and look at how resource intensive science is, our statistics are not perfect, but we have seen a study that said that they estimated that labs consumed around 2% of the world's plastic waste in 2014. We know that labs use around three to five, if not 10 times, if not even 100 times in some specialist cases, more energy than academic office spaces.
Other thing is that science is growing really fast. I like this study. The second bullet point, there was some studies that are looking at citation rates, which are not a perfect metric for the growth rate of science, but it was showing that essentially science is booming. We are publishing a lot more science and we are investing a lot more in science as UNESCO has shown.
For fun, I wanted to try to estimate around the total global impact of research because we don't actually know in terms of carbon emissions, but I did this little... Okay, it's not that fun, but an exercise to try to convert our spend into carbon emissions. And actually, by the way, this is what most of the sector does. We can measure our energy consumption, but when we look at our total impact of all the stuff that we buy, which is actually the biggest impact, we usually have to convert spend into carbon emissions, which it's not a perfect metric, but if we were to look at 2022, 2.5 trillion was spent on R&D. And if we use a publicly available conversion factor, we convert that into 390 megatons, which would rank research and development as the 17th largest country in terms of emissions in the world on par with international aviation. So that's not a perfect metric, I want to say. That's not a perfect measurement, but it gives you an idea of the scope of the impact and it's growing really fast.
Science is also under duress in perspectives. In terms of the resources that we need to actually conduct research, some of the elements and resources are under increased constraints. So, the one I mention often is liquid helium, which is that tiny one up at the top right there. And of course, if you've worked around NMRs or MRIs, that liquid helium is used for cooling of magnets. So, having less than 100 years of these resources does focus the attention on how are we going to do research in the future and how are we going to continue to enable the good that comes from science without sacrificing too much that goes with it? So that's what I wanted to talk about, was the future of sustainable research.
Now, to set the scene, I work in the UK and I've been lucky enough that the UK. It was one of the first countries to set a net-zero target. It did it for 2050. And now I'm lucky enough to work at UKRI, which is UK research innovation. It's the equivalent to the US of NIH, although it covers a broader subset, less funding. It's the UK, but it still is the national funder of research in the UK. And as a funder, we've set a 2040 target for net-zero, which is, really, I have to say they did that before I joined, which is really setting the scene with where I think this is going as a topic. It shows the importance.
A lot of universities and a lot of companies increasingly have set net-zero targets, which is fantastic, but now the question is how do we do that? And especially how do we do that with research? Because science actually is the big consumer of resources on a lot of universities and companies that are doing research. It's the labs. It's the resource intensive institutes.
In the UK, one thing that we have seen, which is, again, I really credit to my colleagues for promoting this, but there's been a concordat of environmental sustainability for research and innovation. What this essentially says is that as a sector, we will come together, and this is a cross sectoral agreement that we will address environmental sustainability in research. And that looks at these priority areas that have put on the screen, and this includes funders and universities. So it really is the sector looking this. It's not just universities in this sense. The fact that funding bodies have signed up for this is really showing the importance of this. This is being held by the Wellcome Trust, which is the fourth-largest charitable organization of the world, also a large funder in the UK and globally. And we've been working with them on this initiative. So it just shows that this is getting taken a lot more seriously.
Now, I think that all of these areas that I put on screen are important. Now, I'm not going to talk to you about all of them. That would take up too much time, but I did want to talk to you about a few of these areas that I think are really crucial towards how we address the sustainability of research moving forward.
Now, I wanted to mention reporting, and it's a boring area sometimes, but it's really important actually. How we report on these emissions is going to change. I showed you that figure in the beginning that showed that spend gets converted into carbon emissions. And actually, when you look at universities that have started to look at their full impacts, we often always talk about energy consumption. You can see that energy consumption, these pie charts are the full emissions of two large universities in Europe. And you can see that energy is actually just a small chunk of it when we consider the whole pie, which is really all the stuff that we buy along with air travel as well.
By the way, the UCL one was in a COVID year, so it was a bit reduced in air travel. But in terms of these pie charts, for UCL, which does a huge amount of research in all types of categories, half of that energy consumption is coming from labs and around half of the impact of their carbon overall was coming from science labs. So it's a very high impact area, but the reporting of how we understand this will change.
Now, purchasing, I know this is relevant and I want to say that this is a two-way street. A lot of pressure in terms of requests for tenders and et cetera is being put on suppliers and manufacturers to show sustainability credentials. And that's good that we're doing it from the purchaser's side, and as a funder, we need to engage how our funds are used in that sense, but also, there needs to be some consolidation of what we ask to make it easier on a manufacturer and supplier like yourself to understand what actions need to be taken. If everybody's asking for different things, that requires administration to upkeep. And I think it's really important that we consolidate these. And I've put these into two different categories here, which is the credentials of the purchase and the company credentials.
Now, some large organizations have already started to do that. I'm going to reference here the NHS. The NHS is our National health service in the UK, and they're a big purchaser. And what they've essentially put out is a roadmap that says that starting this year, they're going to be asking for the credentials of the company, so looking at the carbon reduction plans of companies. And then, eventually, by 2028, they'll be asking for product level requirements, but they're giving suppliers an idea of where this is going. And I think that's how we really affect large change when we know that supply chain is such a big impact, we need to work with suppliers to identify what we're going to do. So that's a great example of this moving forward. We hope to be able to do something like that, I think, in the future with our funding recipients.
The other thing is just in terms of the actual manufacturing. We have seen innovation in this space, and I think I'm going to talk about the research we need in this space, but we do need more innovation in terms of the supplies. And actually, I think NEB, I've heard of some good examples. Everybody always asks about plastics, I think. After energy consumption, it's plastics that everybody asks about. And I just wanted to reference that we have seen biobased polymers. Now, there's issues with this in terms of the supply for biobased polymers, but I have done a lifecycle assessment with some colleagues around this, and it does actually reduce the carbon associated with this. And this is in recognition that we can't reuse everything. There is an element of single use that's required in research and clinical work. And so I do think that this is the way forward in this space to an extent. Supply is an issue though.
Funding, now, I mentioned that we have the concordat, but I want to say that some large funders now in Europe have started to say they want to see environmental sustainability in the research that they fund. In Germany, the DFG, which is the national funder... They've outlined a process for integrating environmental sustainability. Now, their process is more about asking questions of researchers versus cancer research. UK and Wellcome Trust have instead said that they want to see... Well, they want to see actions taken, but they also want to see certification. And that's actually the area that I got most involved in and was partially, I guess for this award, I wrote about. But I just wanted to say that this is gaining importance when the funders start to ask for these things. That's really how we move the needle, and I hope to able to talk about what we're doing from UKRI in that sense as well soon. UKRI actually is being funded at almost nine billion pounds of research funding per annum. So if we can do something from here, we can have a great impact.
Now, certifications I think is a really important way forward. Certifications allow us for, I like the analogy with health and safety, which is that it standardizes things and it makes sure that sustainability is considered before the application phase of a grant. It normalizes things, and I think we're seeing more certifications. This is one that I've seen come out, which is Green DiSC, and this is around recognizing the impact of our digital footprint, which actually is massively increasing and everybody's aware of AI, but it's very relevant in research. And our digital footprint is increasing, so this is an open access free certification, by the way, that's come out of Sustainable Software Institute, which I wanted to reference. And I really think it's important that there's an open access element of this.
The work that I got most involved in is this. I know it just looks like a piece of paper, and that's essentially what it was, how it started, but it's what became the LEAF certification, which grew to be... I think it's certified the most labs in the world. It's run out of UCL. It's focused on academia and essentially bronze, silver, gold. And it's focused on providing a process for labs to assess their environmental sustainability. That's looking at things that everybody talks about when they think about sustainability in labs, in plastics and purchasing, energy consumption, freezers. I'm not even talking about freezers today, but it always gets people going. It's the topic, minus 70, minus 80. All these things that if you're familiar with the area, I haven't even mentioned it, but minus 70, ultra-low temperature freezers used to run at minus 70, run at minus 80. Today. Each one of those uses about the energy consumption, electricity consumption of a house, European house. US houses use a bit more. But yeah, by the way, that's not a pop or anything. I'm American. It's just for numbers, transparency sake.
So yes, that's what I got most involved in was this certification. I think it's an important step, but to move forward, we need more enabling research. We don't know how to do net-zero research today, to be frank. We don't know how to do it all. We increasingly, and I've skipped infrastructure today because I didn't want to talk about buildings too much, but we increasingly know how to build net-zero buildings. And actually, there's a net-zero chemistry building that exists in Nottingham here in the UK. I'm sure there's some examples elsewhere, but that's one of the most impressive ones I've seen, but we need more enabling research.
Now, I love to hear the fact that you have researchers at NEB that are working on some of these challenges, and this was a grant that went out from the Medical Research Council. I've given some examples. There's one from the National Institute of Health Research in the UK. I was lucky enough, before I joined UKRI, to win some of the funding to do some of this research. And I wanted to give some examples, but this is not... I just wanted to give examples because I think this is the type of research that helps motivate folks. The research that I've been working on a lot is biobanking and low carbon storage of samples, but also worked in life cycle assessments, so looking at the embodied carbon of consumables. By the way, those are all open access. So if you want, you can find our embodied carbon of some lab consumables. We also did a life cycle assessment looking at why reuse is actually overall better for carbon. So we need more of this research, but I just wanted to give some examples of it because we don't have all the answers today. And I think it's really motivating that some funders have said that they're going to support this by actually putting out some funding in this space. So I'm excited to see what's next.
By the way, Royal Society of Chemistry have started to look at this in terms of solvents. I don't know if... Actually, that's your business as much, but anyways, I would encourage you to check out that work. Oh, jumped ahead.
Now, one of the areas that I think is most fun to think about is this behemoth that is science. When we think about sustainable research, we always talk about energy consumption and plastics, and these are good things to talk about in solvents. These are important, but there is something else, which is about the quality of research and the growth of research and our publisher parish world that we live in. And I think something I want to say is the quality of research is really important. If our science is not reproducible, does that really represent the best investment of the resources required to generate it? And the obvious answer is no. If we can't access that research, if it's not open access, if only a select few can benefit from it, is that really the best investment of resource? And I'm talking more on a public level here. But when we all compete, and it's good to have competition to an extent, but when we get scooped to reproduce ourselves, if our journals aren't as open access, is that really the best way to do this, when science requires such an immense investment of resources?
So basically, I think these are... I don't have all the solutions. These are big questions, but I think these are interesting things to consider when we think about the environmental stewardship of research moving forward.
One of the things that we've done at UKRI is try to push at the narrative CV, which is moving away from the publisher parish, how many publications have you done? So tried to outline the less visible skills that everybody that works. It's not just scientists. It's everybody that supports science should shout about and highlight the benefits that you give to research because it's those benefits. It's not always the number of publications. And taking away those incentives. And I know that this is a long burn. This is not going to be solved overnight, but we have to consider these things with the growth of research.
I think we also need to consider the mechanisms of self-correction in research, the pathways of research that don't always go the way we want and the ability of research. It's fine to make mistakes. We need to make mistakes. We need to encourage making mistakes. We need to have the ability to learn from them. Without them, then the whole benefit of mistakes is lost in some ways. So, I don't have all the solutions here, but I just think it's a fun area to think about when we consider environmental sustainability and research.
A last area I just want to mention is the importance of energy, clean energy and policy tied to everything. And the graph there is desired decarbonization of the UK grid. I say that because we are slightly behind track, but this is really important because the grid feeds everything. And I know in the US, it depends on energy suppliers and states and state policy and et cetera, but this stuff matters, and it's why some of the materials that we buy, and it's why actually you mentioned one of your buildings are LEAF-certified, when you decrease the consumption associated with your buildings and you reduce the impact of the supplies that you sell. And long-term, when purchasers start to ask for that information, you'll be better off. So, I would commend you on that work.
And of course, travel is really important. Again, I mentioned travel, but we all talk about travel, so I'm not going to mention it too much further. Anyways, I wanted to leave it at that, really. There's a lot going on around sustainable research, and I think I've given a lot of examples from around Europe here. It's a great time to be involved in this topic, and I'm really excited to see where it goes next. There's companies, there's papers, in France, and doing open access calculators on the impact of research. There's networks. There's a podcast called the Caring Scientists. So, there's plenty to sink your teeth into, but plenty more left to be done.
And with that, I wanted to just leave you on a positive note, which is that we can't fix it all. And sometimes it's when we see all the headlines, it's a bit daunting, but we can each focus on our slice of the pie, and that's all we can do, but we can do it really well. And that action in itself, I swear, will motivate others.
I just wanted to also conclude by saying thank you to NEB for this, and also the folks that I've been engaging with, Carrie, Joanne, Marina, David and Nicole who runs Labconscious, which is a great resource, I think, for promoting sustainable research. So I'll stop there and thank you very much for the time and listening and have a lovely rest of the day.
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