Carbon Emissions from Virtual and Physical Modes of Conference and Prospects for Carbon Neutrality: An Analysis From India

Abstract

Virtual conferences are environment-friendly alternatives to physical conferences. COVID-19 pandemic has increased the use of virtual conferences. However, they are not without their share of impact on the environment. We assessed the carbon emissions (CE) of a three day national public health conference with 1474 attendees held in virtual mode and the potential CE saved compared to the physical mode. The CE of the virtual conference were estimated to be 6.44 Metric Tonne (MT) carbon dioxide (CO2) Equivalent (Eq). Potential CE that would have resulted from the physical mode of the conference were 355.85 MT CO2 Eq which is 55 times higher than the virtual mode. The live video streaming of the proceedings was the highest contributor to the virtual conference’s overall CE (81.5%). A digitally sober conference would have emitted 1.27 MT CO2 Eq, translating to a CE reduction of 80.3% from the estimated virtual conference emission. Academic conferences should strive to become carbon neutral by adopting the virtual mode of conferencing, and within that, digital sobriety should be the policy of action. Policies to motivate the adoption of virtual conferencing and digital sobriety need to be undertaken at the organizational and individual levels.

Sustainability of the Metaverse: A Transition to Industry 5.0

“…[61] The metaverse could also help to develop such an approach, either at the micro level (e.g., for houses and people's lives) or at the macro level (e.g., analysis of climate changes). A practical example of emissions abatement when using virtual spaces can be found in [62]: A three-day national public conference with 1474 attendees held online produces 55 times fewer carbon emissions than a conference held at physical locations. Therefore, the metaverse could offer an advantage in terms of the reduction of CO 2 for conferences (where there are usually many attendees who come from around the world).…”

“…The metaverse can and will accommodate a whole series of activities that involve smart working or conferences, drastically reducing physical distance issues and bringing people closer together on a virtual level [62]. The social sustainability of this new ecosystem may be realized, for instance, with the implementation of Horizon Home, a platform developed by Meta that aims to promote socialization by recreating a potentially unlimited meeting place able to geographically connect distant individuals.…”

Astronomy’s climate emissions: Global travel to scientific meetings in 2019

“…However, in light of the climate crisis, researchers, particularly working in the field of medicine, ecology, biology, and astronomy, have started to critically assess their own travel behavior by calculating GHG emissions related to individual, large, annual meetings ( 9–15 ). In general, air travel to conferences makes up the largest contribution of GHG emissions to a meeting by far ( 14 , 15 ). Some studies also compare how the carbon footprint of a recurring meeting evolved over time ( 16–18 ), or how an in-person conference compares to a virtual one ( 19 ).…”

“…Researchers benefit from networking with their colleagues during meetings (Oester et al, 2017), and a correlation of the visibility of a scientist with their amount of air travel seems to exist (Berné et al, 2022). However, in light of the climate crisis, researchers, particularly working in the field of medicine, ecology, biology, and astronomy, have started to critically assess their own travel behaviour by calculating GHG emissions related to individual, large, annual meetings (Callister & Griffiths, 2007;Yakar & Kwee, 2020;Bousema et al, 2020;Passalacqua, 2021;Wortzel et al, 2021;Periyasamy et al, 2022;McClintic & Stashevsky, 2023). In general, airtravel to conferences makes up the largest contribution of GHG emissions to a meeting by far (Periyasamy et al, 2022;McClintic & Stashevsky, 2023).…”

Impact of virtual continued medical education on carbon footprint and awareness of digital sobriety: A retrospective cross-sectional study among public health professionals in India

“…Institutions and individuals can adopt the digital sobriety strategies. Although the existing literature has quantified the emission from virtual events ( 6 ), including digitally sober scenarios ( 4 , 7 ), they did not incorporate the duration spent in the virtual devises and mean years of usage of the devices, which are essential to improve the accuracy of the CE estimate. Also, no studies on the awareness and practice of digitally sober measures among attendees of virtual event could be found.…”