As more than 50,000 people arrived in mid-November to Baku, Azerbaijan, for the United Nations climate conference known as COP29, the irony of the situation was too prominent to ignore.
First, the United Nations received much criticism for holding its annual carbon-reduction-strategy event in a nation that’s a major extractor and exporter of fossil fuels—and is preparing to increase its natural-gas extraction by 35 percent over the next 10 years.
Second, with so many attendees from around the world flying to a Central Asian country with far fewer direct flights and train routes than most other major cities across Europe and Asia, the case could be made that the United Nations does not practice what it preaches regarding the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions to prevent further climate change.
In both cases, it’s surely not a good look for the event host.
But what about corporations and associations that publicly state they are focused on reducing carbon emissions, yet regularly host national meetings that require most attendees to fly there?
During a session at the Professional Convention Management Association’s 2023 Convening Leaders annual meeting, Matthew Huber, an atmospheric-sciences professor at Purdue University, said this to the 3,000 meeting planners and industry suppliers in attendance: Given that 75 to 80 percent of meetings-related emissions comes from air travel, “you must realize that [while] you can try to do your job and cut emissions, unless the emissions [you cut] are due to decreased air travel, you’re working in the margins. If you don’t tackle the issue of air travel, you’re never going to be able to move the needle very much.”
The Regional Solution, and the Response
In a research project on the environmental benefits of converting a national meeting to several regional meetings, Alec Stashevsky, a Los Angeles-based data scientist and economist, showed that the American Psychiatric Association’s per-attendee carbon footprint would drop from 1.19 tons of carbon equivalent (CO2e) to 0.91 tons if an annual meeting in New York was converted to seven regional events held around the country. While that is only a 24 percent drop in event-related carbon emissions, the reason is that New York is one of the most accessible destinations via auto or train for APA’s membership. As a result, using that city for APA’s national meeting minimizes attendee air travel and, in turn, total carbon emissions.
In another scenario, though, Stashevsky showed that the per-attendee carbon footprint would go from 1.61 tons of CO2e for an APA national meeting in San Francisco to 0.76 tons if seven regional meetings were conducted instead—a whopping 60 percent decrease. The reason: Far more APA attendees would have to fly to a meeting in San Francisco.
Thiago Araujo, director of sustainability for BCD Meetings & Events, agrees with Huber that without organizations trying to minimize air travel, the initiatives they implement on site at events “do not make much of a dent” in reducing emissions. And while Araujo feels that “regional meetings are part of the answer” to the challenge, a trend towards big companies holding regional meetings in lieu of national meetings is not likely to emerge in the next few years.
Why? Because too few firms have dedicated themselves to developing truly comprehensive sustainability programs, which would require difficult choices in many areas.
For instance, “does a given company have a stated commitment to reduce their emissions a certain amount and a time frame for that? If not, then the conversation [about meetings-related emissions] has no meaning,” says Araujo. And even if a company has made a specific emissions-reduction commitment, “how important is travel and events for the company’s business strategy and revenue? What balance would the company [be willing to] strike with those components” as it looks to reduce meetings-related emissions without compromising business results?
Araujo points out, though, that there's at least one factor pushing large corporations to focus on comprehensive emissions reduction: the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.
For more than 49,000 organizations that conduct a certain amount of business within the E.U.—including many U.S.-based firms—the 2023 directive “imposed reporting of sustainability practices across hundreds of data points.” As a result, “things will change among those companies,” Araujo says. However, “they will focus on cutting emissions for their big ticket items,” meaning their primary operations and functions. “Air travel and events are down the list. But when those do get on the list—and I believe it will be sooner than later—we will see a clean-up” in the total emissions from meetings.
Actually, ahead-of-the-curve companies might push other firms to meaningfully address their event-related emissions. For instance, “Microsoft is committed to be carbon negative by 2030, which is a massive undertaking,” says Araujo. “They are changing at an unprecedented speed, and I think that will bring about a reinvention of how events will be conducted” first at Microsoft and then at other firms. And “regional meetings will be part of that reinvention.”
In fact, Microsoft already imposes a "carbon fee" that internal departments must pay along with their employees’ event-travel costs. The fee amount correlates to the carbon emissions created by each employee’s travel activity. The levy forces departments to better strategize how often their employees travel and by which mode of transport, while the proceeds go towards Microsoft’s sustainability initiatives.
Different Solution, Tangible Results: Centralization
In his research report, Alec Stashevsky states that “conference planners can powerfully mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions by simply understanding where their attendees come from [and then] choosing event locations that reduce the [total] distance traveled by all attendees.” In fact, doing this can cut total event-related emissions “about three-fold,” he says
Here's further proof of the carbon-reduction impact of using centralized host destinations: During his PCMA presentation, Matthew Huber shared research conducted by the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities. The research demonstrated that the group significantly reduced event-related carbon emissions by moving several of its member academies’ conferences from different destinations in Europe to one central location featuring many direct flights and train routes: Frankfurt, Germany.
“There was a lot of complex analysis that went into it,” Huber said, “but we’re talking about a 25-percent reduction in emissions just by changing the location. That is a big knob that event hosts can turn to improve their emissions scenario.”
Emphasizing the idea that planners are simply “working in the margins” of emissions reduction if they’re focused on actions taken on site rather than on attendee travel, Huber pointed to more of the federation’s research: Offering only vegan meals at a conference of 5,000 attendees reduces carbon emissions, but it's equivalent to the impact of just 25 people not flying to the event.
