On this Earth Day, as the world increasingly searches for a cost-effective way to achieve the Paris Agreement targets for carbon reduction and limit the global temperature rise to 1.5% by 2030, it is becoming increasingly clear that we all will have to use “every tool in the toolbox”.  

Our attention was therefore drawn to a recent paper published by the scientific journal Nature Communications on how virtual and hybrid events contribute to emissions reductions.  Cornell University researchers report a 94% reduction in carbon footprint for virtual events in comparison to in-person events.  The paper uses “food, accommodation, preparation, execution, information and communication technology, and transportation” in its overall calculation, providing one of the more comprehensive assessments of the emissions savings associated with virtual events.  

Interestingly, this is one of the first studies we have seen that assessed the environmental sustainability of hybrid conferences.  And not just the standard hybrid event that may include virtual and in-person participants, but also hybrid as a tool configured in imaginative ways.  The paper proposes the use of more strategic “hybrid” events in “carefully selected hubs”. As an example, by splitting your in-person location in two, and having a site in London and a site in New York and then connecting the two virtually, it can contribute to significant savings since the in-person participants do not fly across the ocean, but instead travel to the site in their country.  

So many of the carbon reduction benefits of virtual are realized while also preserving the benefits and desires to meet in person.  The paper reports “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.”   Although this isn’t a traditional configuration, perhaps the benefits warrant further investigation. 

Overall, OpenExchange is thrilled to have this research validate the emissions impact of our business model, which has a direct impact on reducing our client’s Scope 3 emissions – in particular by better managing business travel.  OpenExchange began to research our client’s potential carbon abatement from virtual events starting in 2020 and we are now developing a robust methodology to analyze our virtual conference data and calculate the carbon saved by not traveling in person. 

By analyzing 6 months of data, we found that while any one virtual event savings was modest on a global scale – when you added them together, they were significant.  We were able to document savings of about 20,000 metric tons of Co2e for the 4 clients we chose to examine (after deducting the emissions from the virtual systems, software and hardware generated by OpenExchange).  Significantly, these savings directly impact their Scope 3 emissions which are typically the hardest to reduce.  

On average for each client, removing 5,000 metric tons of Co2e is the equivalent of growing 82,600 seedlings over 10 years!   

By including our high-quality virtual events as part of a business toolbox, and by re-formulating some of those tools in innovative and measurable ways, we believe we can help our clients contribute to their ESG goals by achieving their Paris Agreement targets and limit global warming for us all.