WillCO2st: leveraging freely available real-time carbon forecasting for research emissions reporting

An increasing number of research institutions and funding bodies are making sustainability a focal point. The rapid rollout of auditing processes, such as the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF), and changing institutional policies, are creating demand for sustainability accounting upon researchers. Despite the increasing expectations on researchers to actively report their sustainability and demonstrate improvement, easy-to-use, and accurate reporting tools for electricity-associated emissions (scope 2) accounting are not widely available. Here, we created WillCO 2 st - a free program that enables fast, publication-read sustainability reports. WillCO 2 st makes use of real-time, region-specific conversion factor data freely available through resources like the Carbon Intensity and Electricity Maps API to create experimental carbon footprinting estimates using metadata from saved experimental files. Data can be simply click-and-dragged into WillCO 2 st to create an experimental sustainability audit within minutes. Further, we exemplified the utility of WillCO 2 st’s live-nudging feature by quantifying the retrospective theoretical reduction in electricity-driven emissions from shifting experimental timing to times of day with lower carbon intensities. Overall, WillCO 2 st eases time and resource burden on researchers and serves as a model for how researchers can effectively and accurately engage with research sustainability auditing.