How can CERN make our planet more sustainable?
Renewable energy, clean transportation, pollution control, climate monitoring, nature protection, green science... These are all goals to ensure a healthier and sustainable planet, able to support the needs of future generations.
Acknowledging global environmental challenges, CERN is taking steps to move from serendipity to a conscious effort to harness its unique skillset to help society’s efforts to preserve the planet.
Whether it is more energy efficient cooling systems or innovative sensors for monitoring pollution, algorithms allowing faster and more efficient computing or superconducting transmission lines minimising power losses, solutions supporting the raising hydrogen economy or the simulation of global scale phenomena, new disruptive technologies are emerging at CERN sowing the seeds for our ecological transition.
Four main sectors with high impact potential and strong synergies with CERN’s technical domains of expertise have been identified: renewable and low-carbon energy, clean transportation and future mobility, climate change and pollution control, sustainability and green science.
In line with CERN’s main objectives for the period 2021-25, the Organization has endorsed a new CERN Innovation Programme on Environmental Applications.
As a first step, ideas on how to address major environmental challenges through CERN technologies, know-how and facilities will be collected from experts, and the most promising concepts selected. The CERN Knowledge Transfer group will then provide full support to the selected ideas, which may give rise to impactful projects in collaboration with external partners.