Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Low Carbon Computing (LOCO 2026)
This volume presents the proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Low Carbon Computing (LOCO 2026), held in September 2026 at Lancaster University, featuring peer-reviewed papers and abstracts that explore interdisciplinary approaches to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions associated with computing technologies.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Imagine the digital world as a massive, bustling city that never sleeps. In this city, every time you send a text, stream a video, or ask a question to a smart assistant, tiny invisible factories are working overtime to make it happen. These factories are the data centers and computers that power our internet. Just like a real city needs electricity to run its lights and trains, our digital city needs energy, and that energy often comes from burning fossil fuels, which releases a gas called carbon dioxide into the air. This gas acts like a thick blanket around our planet, trapping heat and warming up the Earth. Scientists and engineers are now asking a big question: How can we keep our digital city running without making the planet's blanket any thicker? They are looking for ways to measure exactly how much "digital pollution" each app or website creates, how to build software that uses less energy, and how to keep our gadgets working longer so we don't have to throw them away and buy new ones. It's a race to make our technology as clean and efficient as a bicycle compared to a gas-guzzling truck.
This specific document is the official record of a gathering called the 2nd International Workshop on Low Carbon Computing, or LOCO 2026 for short. Think of this workshop as a giant, creative brainstorming session where researchers, tool-makers, and thinkers from all over the world met at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom on September 10, 2026. They didn't just sit around talking; they brought their best ideas, early experiments, and even some wild, radical concepts to the table to figure out how to shrink the carbon footprint of computing. The collection of papers in this volume covers a huge range of topics, from figuring out how to accurately count the carbon emissions of a single software program to designing hardware that lasts for decades instead of years. It's like a toolkit for building a "green" digital future, covering everything from "frugal computing" (using just enough resources to get the job done) to making artificial intelligence that doesn't eat up the whole planet's energy supply.
The authors of these papers didn't just throw ideas at the wall to see what stuck. Every full paper in this book was carefully checked by a team of experts on the LOCO 2026 Programme Committee. They looked at each submission to see if it was original, if it fit the workshop's theme, and if it was good enough to spark a lively, constructive debate. While some papers were fully developed research projects, the book also includes short summaries of "lightning talks"—quick, punchy ideas where authors shared their early thoughts or exciting new directions. The main goal of this entire volume isn't to say that we have solved the problem of digital pollution today, but rather to gather the most promising, critical, and creative perspectives on how we might reduce the greenhouse gas emissions tied to our computers. It suggests that by measuring our impact, building sustainable software, and thinking about the entire life cycle of our devices, we can start to turn our digital city into a place that helps the planet instead of hurting it.
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