200 years in and looking to the future: decarbonising the oldest astronomical society in the world

Founded in 1820, the Royal Astronomical Society is one of the largest astronomy membership organisations in the world, with more than 4,000 members supporting our mission to advance astronomy and geophysics. As well as astronomers, our members (known as ‘Fellows’) include geophysicists and climate scientists committed to understanding and mitigating the impact of anthropogenic global heating.

In 2020 the Society established a Sustainability Working Group, drawing on the experience of other organisations in astronomy. We subsequently commissioned a ‘carbon audit’ to assess the output of CO2 emissions across all our activity, including travel by staff and Fellows, energy use in our premises and scientific publishing.

In this talk I outline the results of the audit, describe how we are now pledged to meet ambitious targets on reducing our CO2 emissions and our wider environmental impact, and set out our initial changes in working practice as we aim to become a ‘net zero’ organisation.