Cambridge Sustainable Computing Lab University of Cambridge, UK

ESCS Community

Connecting scientists and researchers around Environmentally Sustainable Computational Science

Alongside research, community building is a key component of our lab’s work. We have a dedicated Community Manager who leads a number of initiatives that support and complement our tools and projects.

Online Forum

The Environmentally Sustainable Computational Science (ESCS) forum is a space to connect with others on green computing topics, ask questions, and share news and resources — whether you’re new to the domain or have been in this space for years. Whenever we come across news items or publications on the topic, we post it on the forum so that everyone can jump in and discuss it. And of course, anyone in the community is welcome to post and chime into other discussions as well.

ESCS Newsletter

We run a monthly mailing list that brings together interesting resources, publications, projects, and other developments in the sustainable computing space. Most of the content of the newsletters highlight posts and discussions from the online forum. So if we see an interesting post or project coming up, we pick it up in the next release! Take a look at the previous releases here and sign up to the newsletter here.

Green DiSC

We also manage the first open-access certification scheme which provides a roadmap for research groups, computing teams, and institutions who want to tackle the environmental impacts of their computing activities. We work closely with the Green DiSC community — including both applicants and awardees — to design and improve on the criteria to guide researchers in their digital sustainability journey. We run monthly drop-in sessions to chat with the community about their applications, send out newsletters and post on social media when there are announcements, and manage a dedicated channel on the ESCS Forum for the Green DiSC community. Learn more about the scheme, how to enrol, and how to get involved in the community activities here. You can also find us on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Sustainability Conference for Responsible Research Computing (SC4RC)

We organised the first SC4RC conference in May 2026, which brought together computational researchers across various domains interested in reducing the environmental impacts of their research. Joined by over 150 participants online and in-person at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, you can check out the programme here. We look forward to the 2nd SC4RC - coming in 2027/2028!