Sustainability Practices in Academic Travel and Conferences

Academic travel and conferencing have long supported the exchange of ideas, but they also contribute substantially to global greenhouse-gas emissions. Recent efforts have focused on reconciling the imperative for scholarly engagement with the urgency of climate action. Strategies range from optimising event logistics and dietary offerings to adopting digital and hybrid formats that reduce air travel. Institutions are reassessing policies that traditionally prioritise mobility, exploring alternatives such as decentralised meeting sites, intercontinental video links and carbon-aware travel regulations. Advances in data collection and environmental accounting have enabled more accurate measurement of travel-related emissions, informing targeted interventions. Collectively, these practices aim to preserve the benefits of conferences—networking, collaboration and professional development—while minimising their ecological footprint and enhancing inclusivity for participants in low-resource settings.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have applied comprehensive life-cycle assessment to compare in-person, virtual and hybrid conferences. Results indicate that a fully virtual format can reduce the carbon footprint by more than 90% and energy use by nearly the same margin. Hybrid events that maintain significant on-site participation but distribute attendees across strategically chosen hubs can achieve two-thirds reductions in emissions and energy demand. Further mitigation arises from switching to plant-based catering and improving the energy performance of digital infrastructure. This work provides a quantitative basis for conference organisers and funders to adopt greener models without sacrificing critical elements of scholarly exchange.

Sustainability Practices in Academic Travel and Conferences publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in sustainability practices in academic travel and conferences across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Carbon footprint: Total greenhouse-gas emissions expressed in carbon-dioxide equivalents, accrued by an activity or organisation.

Life cycle assessment (LCA): A systematic method for quantifying environmental impacts across all stages of a service or product, from production through disposal.

Virtual conference: An event conducted entirely online, enabling remote participation without physical travel.

Hybrid conference: A meeting format that combines in-person attendance at physical venues with virtual participation.

Hub-and-node model: A hybrid structure in which main sites (‘hubs’) broadcast content to smaller local gatherings (‘nodes’) to reduce long-haul travel.

References

1. Trend towards virtual and hybrid conferences may be an effective climate change mitigation strategy. Nature Communications (2021).
2. The environmental footprint of academic and student mobility in a large research-oriented university. Environmental Research Letters (2019).
3. Emission reduction potentials for academic conference travel. Journal of Industrial Ecology (2020).
4. Moving academic conferences online: Aids and barriers to delegate participation. Ecology and Evolution (2021).