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.
Highlights
Since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has urged event holders to shift conferences online
We perform a holistic life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare the environmental sustainability across virtual, in-person, and hybrid conferences, which takes into consideration the number of hubs and in-person participation levels
Our results show that switching from in-person conference to pure virtual mode substantially reduces the carbon footprint by 94% and cumulative energy demand (CED) by 90%
Summary
Since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has urged event holders to shift conferences online. A recent study on the carbon footprint of virtual, in-person, and hybrid conferences accounted for the video-conferencing-related emissions, transportation, execution, catering, and accommodation[26] It considered a single conference hub for both in-person and hybrid conferences and neglected the geographical effects of hub selection and participant assignment. The geographical effects of hub selection and participant assignment have not yet been investigated in the literature, to the best of our knowledge To fill these knowledge gaps, the objective of this study is to quantify the life cycle environmental impacts of in-person, virtual, and hybrid conferences and to understand the trade-offs between in-person interactions and the carbon footprint of conferences.
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