Are regional conferences better for the environment?

The Story

The COVID-19 pandemic has radically changed the way humans move through space and this change foreshadows the dramatic behavioral and structural shifts climate change demands from humankind.¹ Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with work commutes and industry/professional travel have substantially decreased, leading to distinct improvements in air and water quality.² The International Energy Agency reports global CO₂ emissions dropped 6% compared to 2019, the largest reduction ever at almost 2 gigatons.³

In the wake of lockdowns and event cancellations clearer skies and lack of traffic made the benefits of reduced travel real. It has given us an opportunity to reevaluate the importance of shared spaces and the ways we navigate to and embody them. This transformation formed the impetus for research recently published by myself and a team of Psychiatrists at the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP).

We estimated the carbon footprint associated with the 2018 and 2019 Annual Meetings of the largest psychiatric association in the world, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), then measured how this carbon footprint changes if meetings are held in different locations.⁴ We wanted to understand the environmental costs of holding these meetings and what could be done to mitigate them. If you are interested about the research this case study builds upon, you can check out Wortzel et al. (2021) with no paywall here.

The carbon footprint of such conferences has been shown to be substantial. Wortzel et al. (2021) estimate the 2018 and 2019 APA Annual Meetings produced about 20,000 metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) emissions each—an amount equal to burning 22 million pounds of coal.⁵ This carbon footprint is highly dependent on the distance attendees have to travel. For example, holding the Annual Meeting in Hawaii would produce more emissions than holding over 2.5 Annual Meetings in New York City if the same people attended.⁶ Klöwer et al. (2020) estimate the carbon footprint from the American Geophysical Union’s 2019 fall meeting at 80,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (over 4x the APA’s Annual Meeting) and show that this footprint can be mitigated by 80%-90% just from holding regional conferences in well thought-out locations or offering hybrid in-person and virtual meetings. Similar analyses have been done for the European Astronomical Society’s 2019 annual meeting.

This research shows that taking into account the geographic dispersion of the attendance base and choosing a location accordingly can drastically reduce large conferences’ environmental impact while changing little else. In this post I expand upon Wortzel et al. (2021) by examining another solution to help curb emissions. I test the impact of breaking up one large conference into multiple regional conferences by building a simulation using data from past APA meetings.

History of the Carbon Footprint

Though I use the term carbon footprint throughout this post, I want to acknowledge the (not so pretty) history behind the term. The phrase grew out of a related concept—the ecological footprint—invented in the 90s by ecologist William Rees and regional planner Mathis Wackernagel.⁷

However it was not until the early 2000s that the term was popularized by oil giant BP. In 2004, BP unveiled the first “carbon footprint calculator” which provided individuals with a way to quantify how much heat-trapping carbon pollution they were releasing into the atmosphere.⁸ Unfortunately, it provided users with no way of measuring the carbon footprint of drilling deep into the Earth to extract fossil fuels and occasionally dumping thousands of gallons of it into the ocean.

Shifting the discourse of pollution onto the individual has long been a tactic of the largest corporate polluters. Research on global warming must acknowledge and push back against this narrative.

A Regional Format for the APA

The APA has 7 distinct regions between the US and Canada.⁹ I use this existing framework to simulate the regional conferences.

1. New England & Eastern Canada [⬤]
2. New York [⬤]
3. Middle Atlantic [⬤]
4. North Central [⬤]
5. American South & Puerto Rico [⬤]
6. California [⬤]
7. American West & Western Canada [⬤]

Though the APA has a considerable amount of international members, only Canadians are given a regional designation.

Simulation Framework

Using attendance data from the APA’s 2018 New York City and 2019 San Francisco Annual Meetings, I assign each attendee to one of these seven regions based on their origin location and then identify likely transport modes and routes according the assumptions laid out in Wortzel et al. (2021).

The simulation classifies attendees into either drivers or fliers based on their distance from the meeting location.¹⁰ Attendees less than 400 km (under 4 hr. driving) are assumed to drive directly to the meeting. All other attendees drive to the closest commercial airport and then fly direct to the nearest commercial airport to the meeting. I then apply an emissions function to the ground and air legs of each attendee’s round-trip route.¹¹

In order to simulate the way attendees would travel to the regional conferences, I had to extend some assumptions from Wortzel et al. (2021). I assume international attendees not part of the existing regional structure travel to whichever meeting is closest, ensuring a conservative estimate. The other extending assumption is the location of the seven regional meetings. I select locations where the APA has previously held Annual Meetings, except for Seattle.¹²

Visualizing Travel

To understand the effect of the regional categorization, we can compare the travel paths between the Annual Meeting and regional meeting simulations. The map below shows everyone who attended the 2018 Annual Meeting in New York City, over 16 thousand people.¹³

Here we can see all attendees converge on the Javits Center in New York City.

Now, let’s examine the map when attendees from the 2018 NYC meeting travel to the regional meetings instead.

Most of the European attendees are absorbed by Region 3 (purple, New York City conference). Most of the Asian attendees are absorbed by Region 7 (lime green, Seattle conference), and most of the Australian attendees are absorbed by Region 6 (yellow, Los Angeles conference).

Attendance is somewhat evenly distributed across regions . . .

The attendance at each regional meeting is around 1,500 to 3,000. This is a good indication that the regional designations assigned by the APA and our assumptions about international attendees break the membership base into somewhat even parts. The exception is the New York City meeting on the left panel because it captures the majority of international attendees, whom are largely from Europe (see regional map above). When we use the 2019 Data the attendance is much more even.

Regional Simulation Resuts

Following our assumptions, I estimate total GHG emissions for the meetings under the regional conference format. The tables below present the results for the 2018 New York City and 2019 San Francisco simulations.

The total emissions are significantly lower under the regional conference format. Compared to the original meeting at the Javits Center in NYC, a regional conference format would save almost 5 thousand metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents—a 24% reduction. The regional format for the SF meeting reduced the emissions by more than half!¹⁴

Why do the SF regional meetings save so much more emissions than the NYC meetings? One reason is because people had to travel farther on average to attend the SF Annual Meeting which made it less efficient than the NYC meeting. Though over 3,300 fewer people attended the SF meeting, almost 2,000 more tons of CO₂e was produced.¹⁵

The Benefits of Regional Conferences

Based on this simulation study regional conferences can reduce a meeting’s carbon footprint by over 50% (given a similar attendance), but there are many more aspects that make regional conferences an attractive solution—especially if they are held as supplements to centralized conferences.

Regional conferences are much smaller and usually break up a community into geographically-connected regions. This smaller format may be easier to administer, less costly, and provide attendees with more intimate opportunities to network with local colleagues. Smaller meetings may increase engagement in working groups or activities limited by size or participation.

Regional conferences allow for discourse built-up from a more concentrated membership. This may be particularly beneficial for associations advancing policy because such a format allows regions to develop a set of priorities most relevant to them (such as focusing on state or municipal policy) and then advance this smaller set of priorities to the larger base whose scale may in turn provide much needed support.

Regional conferences may also have the potential to increase attendance and subsequently revenue. Some members may find it too expensive or too time consuming to travel long distances to centrally-located conferences. This may alienate sections of the membership in fringe geographies and discourage others who feel not enough of their colleagues will attend.

Traveling to remote conference destinations can be attractive for those who wish this time to double as a vacation, but it may leave the conference vulnerable to drops in attendance as some locations are more favorable than others.¹⁶ More importantly, such a framework may introduce priorities contradictory to emissions reduction. Meeting planners may be pressured to hold meetings in more remote places to encourage attendance and significantly increase emissions from travel as a result.

Conference administrators and planners can unlock a powerful framework to mitigate GHG emissions by simply understanding where their attendees come from. Choosing locations which reduce the distance attendees have to travel can cut emissions over 3-fold while changing little else. Regional format conferences are another tool administrators and planners have in their kit to mitigate against emissions and potentially augment attendance.

As of 2017, almost 35 million square meters of indoor space was dedicated to some form of exhibition.¹⁷ When we consider the impact of such environmentally-conscious planning on an industry-level, the potential reduction in emissions is huge.

I would like to thank my coauthors from GAP, especially Dr. Joshua Wortzel and Dr. Elizabeth Haase for the opportunity to support this research.

If you are interested in performing similar analyses for your conference please checkout the Code Repository on my GitHub, or feel free to reach out!