Scotland’s Space Sustainability Roadmap has just been launched on the international stage as a means to garner new partnerships to fight climate change. 

The roadmap offers short, medium, and long term packages to help negate the space industry’s carbon footprint and advance climate change science in space. 

Focusing on key areas such as the environmental impacts of satellites, green propellants, spaceports’ sustainability, and the importance of using satellite data for environmental monitoring, the project presents a clear roadmap towards net zero goals. 

The initiative is believed to be the first sustainability strategy of its kind, and was originally kicked started by funding from Scottish Enterprise. 

Space Scotland’s Environmental Task Force, set up in 2019 as a voluntary grouping of over 20 UK-based space companies, universities and government agencies, called for the space sustainability Roadmap’s creation at the start of this year and went on to provide guidance around the resulting eleven work packages. 

The work packages are organised thematically into areas of: Leadership, In-Orbit, and Environment and Net Zero. 

The Leadership packages focus on the promotion of space sustainability through public commitments and planning in the domestic and international sphere. 

Focusing on space operations themselves, In-Orbit packages will encourage responsible and sustainable practices, such as space debris mitigation. 

Environment and Net Zero packages will aim to reduce emissions and mitigate overall environmental impacts of the space sector. 

By 2025, the project hopes to cut space sector emissions by 50%; by 2045, the project aims to achieve net zero emissions. 

“Having collaborated locally and internationally to produce the Roadmap, the aim now is to share what we’ve learned and champion the need for similar strategic initiatives, with more than 80 countries around the world developing space programmes and that number expected to grow,” Director of Space Scotland, Daniel Smith, stated. 

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Shortly after the space sustainability Roadmap was published, Scottish Enterprise announced it would contribute to the next phase of the initiative, by launching the Applying Space Data to the Net Zero Economy innovation challenge, which is closely aligned with a key theme from the document; environment and net zero.

Sharon Pryde, Space Specialist at Scottish Enterprise said: “The Roadmap, instigated by Space Scotland’s Task Force and delivered by AstroAgency and Optimat, has helped to formalise the Scottish space industry’s desire to use space to combat climate change and support multiple sectors in their drive towards net zero.”

Renowned space environmentalist from the University of Texas at Austin, Professor Moriba Jah added:  “Scotland has a long history of subscribing to the belief that all things are interconnected and embracing an intergenerational contract of stewardship. 

“Humanity is in an existential crisis and the only way through it is by having a successful conversation with the environment. Alba is leading the way”.

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