NIHR Carbon Assessment Methodology

The NIHR carbon footprint methodology proved readily transferable to the French academic trial context. The NIHR published a standardised methodology in 2023 for calculating the carbon footprint of academic clinical trials, including a detailed guide and data collection questionnaire. NIHR methodology version V0.5 structures a clinical trial into 10 modules, and activity data from each module are multiplied by appropriate emission factors to yield a carbon estimate. UK-specific emission factors in the original NIHR tool were replaced with French equivalents from the ADEME Base Empreinte database, with a small subset substituted from the European Ecoinvent database or UK publications. The NIHR method has inherent scope limitations: it does not distinguish between sponsor-related and investigation-related carbon consumption and excludes water use, land use, and socioeconomic impacts. The NIHR method excludes biologic drug manufacturing from its scope, even though such manufacturing is typically carbon-intensive.