Anaconda is already installed on halperingpu at /scratch/anaconda3/bin/conda (please do not download and install a new one)
Add conda to your ~/.bashrc (so that conda command will be available on every shell startup)
/scratch/anaconda3/bin/conda init
source ~/.bashrc
By default, conda is set to create new envs on /home, however, this folder has pretty low storage volume and we thus install conda envs only on /scratch.
Create an empty conda configuration file
touch ~/.condarc
Add your /scratch path to your .condarc (to set it as the default path for env installations)
conda config --prepend envs_dirs /scratch/<your_username>/envs
Make sure your .condarc includes the /scratch path you've just added
cat ~/.condarc
Finally, you can create a new environment on /scratch
conda create -n <env_name> python=3.9