The National Petascale Computing Facility (NPCF) is a supercomputing facility funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that serves users across the country. It is important to the Illinois research mission to continue to be at the forefront of research in supercomputing-intensive fields, including the modeling of climate change. As of FY14, NPCF consumed about 87,000 MWh/year of electricity, which represents roughly 18% of the campus electrical load. Because the NSF grant supporting NPCF is only five years in duration, and because the future load of this facility is uncertain, it is not practical for the campus to install electrical generation facilities (renewable or otherwise) to support the load. Given the relatively short timeframe, it is also not reasonable to enter into long-term Power Purchase Agreements to supply NPCF with renewable electricity.

The best option to eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions from NPCF and future supercomputing facilities is therefore to purchase carbon offsets for the entirety of those emissions.  Ideally, the cost of purchasing offsets could be included in future proposals to NSF or other agencies to support supercomputers; alternately, the campus could assume those costs itself as part of its commitment to host such facilities.