Digital sustainability

Students sat at a laptop

At 糖心Vlog破解版, we’re committed to making our digital world as sustainable as our physical one. From the way we design our online services to how we store and process data, we’re working to reduce the environmental impact of our digital activities while improving accessibility, efficiency, and user experience.

Student sat at a laptop

Digital infrastructure

All our data servers and digital infrastructure at Lancaster are powered by the University electricity. In 2026 for the first time we generated 100% of our own electricity from our solar farm and wind turbine. According to figures published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, we are one of the highest producers of renewable energy of all UK universities.

Student stood with a VR headset on

Reducing e-waste and emissions

We have taken many actions to reduce emissions and e-waste including:

  • We have a records management policy to ensure we are GDPR-compliant and reduce emissions from data storage wherever possible.
  • We have announced the to reduce data usage and storage.
  • Held "tech amnesty" days to encourage staff and students to hand in old, unused tech items to be sent to our IT partners for safe and secure recycling. We also have a process where the IT team will collect old or unused IT equipment for re-use or recycling.
Student sat at a laptop

Our website

We’re continually exploring new ways to strengthen the sustainability performance of our website. As of the 2025/26 academic year, we’ve already introduced several measures to help lower the environmental impact of our online presence:

  • All web images must have a file size of less than 500KB, but ideally lower than 250KB on certain pages. We also have safeguards in place to warn about images that are too large to upload.
  • We use Siteimprove to regularly sweep the website for images that are too big.
  • The web team run monthly user training sessions that include topics on image optimisation, using images on the website and accessibility best practice.
Student sat at a computer

AI usage

The University has published our official tools including for both staff and students, taking into account the ethical and privacy/data protection implications.

We also offer a training module on Digital Sustainability that allows both staff and students to gain a skills certificate that tests them on their knowledge of sustainability in AI, data storage and IT hardware.