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. 2021 Dec 16;12(1):7324.
doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-27251-2.

Trend towards virtual and hybrid conferences may be an effective climate change mitigation strategy

Yanqiu Tao  1 , Debbie Steckel  2 , Jiří Jaromír Klemeš  3 , Fengqi You  4   5   6
Affiliations

Trend towards virtual and hybrid conferences may be an effective climate change mitigation strategy

Yanqiu Tao et al. Nat Commun. .

Abstract

Since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has urged event holders to shift conferences online. Virtual and hybrid conferences are greener alternatives to in-person conferences, yet their environmental sustainability has not been fully assessed. Considering food, accommodation, preparation, execution, information and communication technology, and transportation, here we report comparative life cycle assessment results of in-person, virtual, and hybrid conferences and consider carbon footprint trade-offs between in-person participation and hybrid conferences. We find that transitioning from in-person to virtual conferencing can substantially reduce the carbon footprint by 94% and energy use by 90%. For the sake of maintaining more than 50% of in-person participation, carefully selected hubs for hybrid conferences have the potential to slash carbon footprint and energy use by two-thirds. Furthermore, switching the dietary type of future conferences to plant-based diets and improving energy efficiencies of the information and communication technology sector can further reduce the carbon footprint of virtual conferences.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Illustration of a hybrid conference that can be accessed by both in-person participants and virtual participants.
Here we demonstrate the hybrid mode of a conference, where virtual participants are connected with in-person participants traveling to the conference hubs through video-conferencing technologies. Yellow lines indicate the virtual pathway, and green lines indicate the in-person pathway to approach the conference.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. Comparison between the 1-hub in-person conference and the virtual conference.
a Carbon footprint associated with transportation for individual participants, indicating that the per pkm carbon footprint for trips primarily by plane (slope of cyan dashed line) tends to be smaller than that for driving (slope of orange dashed line). b Cumulative carbon footprint for participants with increasing travel distances, showing that 50% of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for all participants’ trips result from long-distance travels with a round-trip distance of over 10,000 km. c Environmental profiles of the virtual conference and in-person conference with only one hub, suggesting the environmental and energy sustainability of virtual conference in all impact categories. Colors represent different processes within the life cycle stages. Specifically, transitioning from in-person to virtual conferencing reduces the carbon footprint by 94% and cumulative energy demand (CED) by 90%. Among the impact categories at the midpoint level, air transportation dominates fossil depletion, marine eutrophication, natural land transformation, ozone depletion, and photochemical oxidant formation for the 1-hub in-person scenario. And food preparation, electricity consumption at home, and information communication technology (ICT) services contribute to the majority of each impact category for the baseline virtual scenario. Moreover, agricultural land occupation, terrestrial ecotoxicity, and water depletion are dominated by food preparation for both in-person and virtual conferences. CO2 eq., CO2 equivalent.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3. Map of transportation routes and hub decisions for in-person scenarios.
a 1-hub in-person conference. b 2-hub in-person conference. c 3-hub in-person conference. d 4-hub in-person conference. e 5-hub in-person conference. f 6-hub in-person conference. Dots represent the origins of participants, and lines represent the route from their origins to their assigned conference hubs. Their colors indicate the assignments of participants to the conference hubs. Color scale shows the number of participants in each region around the world. These regions are divided according to the regional datasets for electricity production in Ecoinvent.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4. Overall environmental sustainability of the virtual and in-person conferences.
a Carbon footprint, Cumulative energy demand (CED), and 17 ReCiPe midpoint indicators of the in-person scenarios, including the virtual conference and in-person conferences with 1 to 6 hubs, for an average participant. Colors indicate the intensity levels of environmental impacts. b Breakdowns of carbon footprint per participant for the in-person scenarios. Colors represent different processes within the life cycle stages. c Average travel distances by transportation mode on a logarithmic scale for the in-person scenarios with 1 to 6 hubs. CO2 eq., CO2 equivalent.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5. Trade-offs between face-to-face communication and carbon footprint.
Different markers indicate the results of different scenarios, and their colors refer to the number of conference hubs. Doughnut charts represent the breakdowns of scenarios, pointed by the blue dashed lines. a Comparison between the hybrid scenarios with a constraint of the maximum virtual participation, the in-person scenarios, and the baseline virtual scenario. b Comparison between the hybrid scenarios with a constraint of the maximum travel distance, the in-person scenarios, and the baseline virtual scenario. CO2 eq., CO2 equivalent.
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