Research Summary: LOCO 2026 Lightning Talk Abstracts: 2nd International Workshop on Low Carbon Computing

The 2nd International Workshop on Low Carbon Computing (LOCO 2026), held at Lancaster University, United Kingdom, compiled 14 lightning-talk contributions. These papers focus on emerging research and practical approaches to mitigate the environmental footprint of computing, covering topics from carbon measurement and sustainable AI to hardware longevity and post-growth digital strategies.

Why it matters

This event highlights the increasing strategic imperative to integrate environmental sustainability into the core of computing and digital technology development. Addressing these challenges is crucial for long-term operational resilience, regulatory compliance, and aligning with global climate objectives across all sectors relying on digital infrastructure.

Key insights

• The workshop addresses the environmental impacts of computing through various research and practical applications.
• Key themes include carbon and energy measurement, and the development of carbon-aware computational scheduling.
• Sustainable artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are significant areas of focus.
• Discussions extend to high-performance computing, computational sufficiency, and hardware longevity.
• The workshop also explores interoperability, frugal computing, and post-growth approaches to digital technology.
• Contributions represent early-stage results, practical tools, and critical perspectives on low carbon computing.

Source

arXiv — Computers and Society — https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.13355