This summer in the Northern hemisphere has been a real scorcher with Western Europe experiencing prolonged hot and dry conditions that have fueled extreme wildfires across the region.

With that weather set to become the norm rather than a one-off event, everyone will need to do their bit to curtail the impact of climate change and “big science” is no different.

In this year’s Physics World Big Science Briefing , we report how accelerator science is making its technologies and facilities more sustainable. The aim is not only to cut the energy and resources that accelerators use, but also to understand – and, more importantly, minimize – their “whole-lifetime” environmental impact.

Longer term, researchers are also prioritizing disruptive accelerator concepts that could slash the size, cost and carbon footprint of next-generation facilities.

One example is plasma-wakefield acceleration, which uses laser- or particle-beam-driven intense “plasma waves” as the accelerating medium, yielding electric fields up…