The 2019 carbon footprint of the W. M. Keck Observatory is estimated at 3.0 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per science night and that figure will move towards net zero over the next decade or so by decarbonizing the Observatory’s vehicle fleet, aviation footprint reductions and other measures.
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Acknowledgements
The W. M. Keck Observatory is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain.
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McCann, K.L., Nance, C., Sebastian, G. et al. A path to net-zero carbon emissions at the W. M. Keck Observatory. Nat Astron 6, 1223–1227 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01827-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01827-4
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