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

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          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.

          Abstract

          Moving conferences from in-person to virtual and hybrid modes may have emissions reductions benefits. Here the authors find that the switch to virtual and hybrid conferencing reduces the carbon footprint by 94% when it comes to the switch to virtual conferencing, and 67% for hybrid conferences with carefully selected hubs.

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          Most cited references39

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                fengqi.you@cornell.edu
                Journal
                Nat Commun
                Nat Commun
                Nature Communications
                Nature Publishing Group UK (London )
                2041-1723
                16 December 2021
                16 December 2021
                2021
                : 12
                : 7324
                Affiliations
                [1 ]GRID grid.5386.8, ISNI 000000041936877X, Systems Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, ; New York, NY 14853 USA
                [2 ]The American Center for Life Cycle Assessment, Bethesda, MD 20824 USA
                [3 ]GRID grid.4994.0, ISNI 0000 0001 0118 0988, Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory – SPIL, NETME Centre, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, , Brno University of Technology - VUT Brno, Technická 2896/2, ; 616 69 Brno, Czech Republic
                [4 ]GRID grid.5386.8, ISNI 000000041936877X, Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, , Cornell University, Ithaca, ; New York, NY 14853 USA
                [5 ]GRID grid.5386.8, ISNI 000000041936877X, Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, , 340 Tower Road Cornell University Ithaca, ; Ithaca, NY 14853 USA
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6397-8362
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7450-7029
                http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9609-4299
                Article
                27251
                10.1038/s41467-021-27251-2
                8677730
                34916499
                13be7a45-d42f-4ea3-a63e-5901dbd263d9
                © The Author(s) 2021

                Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

                History
                : 19 July 2021
                : 10 November 2021
                Funding
                Funded by: FundRef https://doi.org/10.13039/100000001, National Science Foundation (NSF);
                Award ID: CBET-1643244
                Award Recipient :
                Categories
                Article
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2021

                Uncategorized
                environmental impact,climate-change impacts
                Uncategorized
                environmental impact, climate-change impacts

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