Sustainability Blog September 2026

It’s been quite a summer

Back in February we kicked this blog series off with an update on our decarbonisation work – some of the challenges we faced, how we recalibrated our target and how we were sharing the story of our journey.

Six months on, this summer has given us a pretty stark reminder of why that work is so important.

Along with the rest of the UK, Bristol experienced the hottest summer on record, with repeated heatwaves and long periods of unusually high temperatures. And for us, that did rock the boat.

Keeping a large and complex public-facing building comfortable during prolonged heat takes some real active management. A big shout-out to our Estates team who, during the hottest periods, had to step away from some of their usual work to monitor our cooling systems throughout the day and adjust things as conditions changed.

It’s a real-life example of a much bigger challenge: adapting to a changing climate is increasingly becoming part of running places like ours, alongside the work we’re already doing to reduce our emissions.

 

Meanwhile, the work carries on

There have been plenty of smaller wins happening behind the scenes too:

✅ We’ve kept working on energy reduction. 
Over the summer, we spoke at a Bristol Climate & Nature Partnership event about staff engagement and some of the practical changes we’ve been making around our building. These include a switch-off campaign, installing PIR sensors and reducing lighting wattage in parts of our estate. None are huge changes on their own, but together they help us keep chipping away at unnecessary energy use.
 
✅ We’ve been looking more closely at the environmental impact of AI. 
Our six-month internal AI pilot has wrapped up and, alongside looking at how useful staff found different tools, we’ve carried out some initial carbon impact modelling. With so much uncertainty around AI’s environmental impact, we wanted to understand what our own use might mean in practice. We’ll share some of what we’ve learned with colleagues across the science centre sector this autumn.
 

✅And sometimes it really is about the small stuff. 
We sent 8.4kg of waste filament from our 3D printers back to be recycled. It won’t change the world on its own, but finding better routes for materials that would otherwise become waste is exactly the kind of everyday improvement we want to keep making.

Talking about climate differently

Our sustainability work isn’t only about what happens behind the scenes.

This summer we hosted two internal screenings of the People’s Emergency Briefing, a film and campaign designed to help people understand the climate and nature emergency and create space for conversation about it.

We’ll also be taking the briefing to the Association for Science and Discovery Centres conference in October, opening up that conversation with colleagues across the sector. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can find local public screenings through the National Emergency Briefing Map, or ask your employer to host a workplace screening.

Facts, targets and carbon calculations definitely have their place, but tackling climate change also means finding ways for people to engage with what’s happening and explore what comes next.

That thinking is showing up in our exhibition spaces too. This summer, in partnership with Bristol City Leap, we launched a new exhibit. Visitors can send colourful scarves flying through a network of pipes and valves while exploring how low-carbon heat and energy are already changing the city around us. You can read more about that here.

All of these strands connect: reducing the impact of our own building and operations, adapting to the changes already happening around us, and creating spaces where people can explore what different futures might look like.

So, that’s our end-of-summer check-in. There’s plenty more to do, but there’s plenty happening here as well. Until next time …