In May 2026 we launched our new ICT Sustainability Roadmap. It is structured around four strategic themes:
- Baselining our emissions and waste
- Taking action on emissions and waste
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- ICT enabled sustainability
The roadmap aligns with Imperial’s commitment to reach net zero Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 2040 and to minimise Scope 3 emissions wherever possible.
Together, the actions set out in our roadmap are an ambitious and practical pathway for Imperial to reduce its environmental impact.
Roadmap themes
Click on the headings below to find out more about each theme:
Four Themes
- Baseline our emissions and waste
- Take action on emissions & waste
- Artificial Intelligence
- ICT enabled sustainability
We will baseline our impacts by September 2028:
Baseline our ICT emissions, including:
- Embodied carbon and emissions from electricity use of our hardware e.g. desktops and laptops.
- Emissions created from our own/co-located data centres.
- Emissions from our cloud use.
- Emissions from all other ICT use.
Baseline our ICT waste:
- Number of ICT devices sent through the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) process.
Achieve Green DiSC bronze by Autumn 2026 and silver by 2028 for central ICT systems.
Emissions
- Buy less - Embed sustainability into research bids by 2028, encouraging the use of ICT compute services rather than large personal devices where possible.
- Buy better - Investigate the purchase of remanufactured devices instead of buying new.
- Use better - Introduce a sustainable data centre for High-Performance Computing (HPC) and reduce reliance on the aging South Kensington data centre (non HPC) by moving applications to the cloud and modern data centres.
- Use for longer - Extend the life of hardware against a balance of performance and user requirements. We will establish a refurbished first principle by 2028, investigating if laptops can be refurbished before disposal.
- Create sustainable ICT short courses and wider sustainable communication to enhance the in-house culture around sustainable use of computing infrastructure and reduce emissions.
Waste
- Use for longer - Reuse ICT equipment within property refurbishment projects where possible and establish a project specific ICT % reuse target by end of 2026.
- Investigate the impact of Windows upgrades on our waste.
Start to understand the impact from AI.
- Start a Professional Services AI working group in 2026 which will include investigating how to evaluate and reduce the environmental impact of AI.
- Facilitate collaborative working between the ICT division, research technical professionals and academics, other universities and groups with a focus on data centres and AI.
- Understand the increase in emissions due to our AI use to 2031, where available data allows.
Enable Imperial wide sustainability:
- Continue to embed data into the Imperial Emissions Pathway, so departments can make low carbon decisions.
- Create projects within the Imperial sustainability sandbox to showcase university wide sustainability.
- Use Wi-Fi and My Imperial Campus to promote sustainable behaviours.
- Encouraging the use of Ecosia search engine.
- Look out for the new green computing course for researchers, launching summer 2026 by our Research Computing Service.
How you can help
You may be wondering how you can champion sustainability. Our Seven Steps to ICT Sustainability gives you top tips to Buy less, Buy better, Use better and Use for longer.
Why sustainability in ICT is important
"Sustainability underpins everything we do and is a cross-cutting theme of our Digital Plan. As part of our sustainability roadmap we will baseline our impact, take action to extend the life of hardware and grow responsibly using highly-efficient data centres.” Jenny Rae Chief Information Officer
Worldwide emissions from IT are now larger than aviation. We may consider not taking a flight, but do we consider not buying the laptop, workstation or using AI?
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) at Imperial has a material impact on the university’s environmental footprint, accounting for nearly one fifth of the university’s total greenhouse gas emissions when electricity use, data centres, cloud services, digital infrastructure and procurement are considered. At the same time, ICT is critical to delivering world-leading research, education, and operations.
Governance
Progress against this roadmap will be overseen through established ICT governance structures including the ICT Leadership team, the Sustainability Committee, and it is aligned with the university’s Digital Plan under the Operations and Infrastructure Committee.