I’m really pleased to announce a new collection of content from the Nature Reviews journals on the topic of physics and sustainability. Physicists are aware of environmental sustainability issues: over 90% of surveyed physicists in the US believe the planet is warming because of human activity, for example. However, for many physicists, the connection between research and the environment can feel tenuous. And physics research comes with environmental costs – whether it’s the electricity used to run supercomputers, the flights taken by researchers to attend conferences, or the use of finite natural resources such as helium-3.

The goal of the collection is to help the physics community – you! – take environmental action, both by working on questions that have direct relevance to sustainability goals and understanding Earth’s climate, but also by changing the ways physicists work.

Articles in the collection cover topics like:

• How to do physics in a greener way, such as:

  • How to teach climate change in a physics classroom

  • How computational scientists should take climate impacts into account – and so should funders

  • How to assess the climate footprint of large-scale projects

  • How to get to conferences by train instead of plane

• Physics of photovoltaics

• The future of fusion research

• The physics of Earth’s climate

We’ll be adding to the collection regularly for at least the next year, and we’re looking forward to seeing it grow. If you have thoughts on topics we should cover or people we should talk to, do get in touch!