Five years ago, “Sustainability” in the corporate world meant planting a few trees and putting a green logo on a PDF report. Today, it is a hardcore, heavily regulated, data-driven engineering discipline.
With regulations tightening globally (read up on the latest from the IPCC), companies can no longer guess their carbon output. They have to prove it mathematically. This is where Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) comes in.
What is Carbon Vectorization?
It’s the process of tracking the exact carbon cost of every single component in a supply chain. If you build a smartphone, what was the carbon cost of mining the lithium in Chile, shipping it to China, assembling it using a coal-powered grid, and flying it to New York? Computing this requires massive database management and AI interpolation for missing data.
As researchers, we also have a footprint. Have you ever wondered what the carbon cost of training your neural network is? Or running a -80 freezer for a year? We built a Carbon Footprint of Research Calculator so you can quantify your own academic impact.
If you are looking for a career pivot, LCA analysis is currently facing a massive talent shortage. The demand drastically outweighs the supply of qualified scientists.