4–7 June 2024 – Session at the SF2A conference

June 2024

The collaborative workshop My Earth in 180’, designed to build scenarios for reducing the carbon footprint of research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, took place during SF2A Week !

During French Astronomy and Astrophysics Week, organised by SF2A, which took place from 4 to 7 June 2024 in Marseille, 7 sessions of the interactive “My Earth” workshop were organised during the lunch breaks over 3 days of the conference to build scenarios for reducing the carbon footprint of research activities in Astronomy and Astrophysics. More than 50 professionals were therefore faced with the challenge of reducing their team’s carbon footprint by 50% by proposing alternative practices with significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions.

My Earth in 180’

My Earth in 180’ is a fun and collaborative 3-hour workshop, shortened to 1.5 hours for the SF2A conference, designed to build scenarios for reducing our carbon footprint and raising awareness of planetary boundaries. The aim is to start discussions by questioning the activities of a fictional research team, in order to propose lower-emission alternatives and raise awareness of the impact of these measures on the team’s greenhouse gas emissions. These workshops are organised in groups of 6 to 7 people.
A review of these sessions was then carried out, presented and discussed during the session “What kind of astrophysics research in a sustainable world ?” on the afternoon of Friday 7 June. This showed the trajectories of the different groups, which achieved emissions reductions ranging from 37% to 59%.

This workshop, which is flexible and open to everyone, can be organised at different scales — for a research team, a laboratory or an institute — to raise awareness among members of environmental issues, but also to collectively explore reduction pathways that can already be implemented and, ultimately, build a “decarbonisation” plan.

Scientific article on alternatives to travel : Gratiot et al., 2023

Contact : F. Malbet, A. Santerne, J. Milli, N. Champollion.

Updated on 4 juillet 2026