To mark World Environment Day on 5 June, CERN has released its new environmental objectives for 2030, which emphasise its ongoing commitment to environmentally responsible and sustainable research. These updated goals align with CERN’s strategic vision, the evolving landscape of particle physics research and global sustainability expectations.

Building on the original objectives, published in CERN’s first Environment Report (2017–2018), these revised objectives span nine key environmental domains: energy, greenhouse gas emissions, water, biodiversity, non-hazardous waste, radioactive waste, ionising radiation, noise and hazardous substances.

Highlights include:

• Limiting electricity consumption to 1.5 TWh/year during Run 4 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), despite a significant increase in physics output.
• Reducing direct CO₂-equivalent emissions by 50% compared to 2018 levels, helped by reducing gas consumption by 60%.
• Improving the quality of CERN’s effluent water, increasing on-site water retention capacity and limiting water consumption, while also meeting the growing demand for cooling water.
• Increasing biodiversity on CERN’s sites by enhancing local ecosystems and addressing urban heat islands, where temperatures are significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas, particularly at night.
• Boosting the recovery of non-hazardous waste, including reuse and recycling of materials, while aiming to reduce “household waste” by 5% per person.
• Strengthening noise control, reducing the potential impact of hazardous substances and limiting the production of radioactive waste.

These objectives, developed by the CERN Environmental Protection Steering Board (CEPS) through a collaborative and iterative process, were approved by CERN’s Enlarged Directorate in 2024 and reflect a unified approach to minimising the Organization’s environmental footprint. They reflect CERN’s ambition to act as a role model for sustainable research, integrating environmental protection into all areas, from scientific operations to site management. The next long shutdown (LS3) of CERN’s accelerators, starting mid-2026, will be a pivotal moment to complete major projects, such as those targeting emissions reduction. Many of the actions taken in the period 2023–2024 will be outlined in the Organization’s fourth environment report, which will be published at the end of 2025.

Learn more about CERN’s environmental commitments on its dedicated Environmentally responsible research at CERN webpage.