Carbon footprint of conference travel
ISTA scientists examine the sustainability of travel to international NMR meetings
Institute of Science and Technology Austria
image:
Climate Footprint of Conference Travel: Train vs. Plane. ISTA PhD graduate Natália Ružičková presents data at an ISTA Special Institute Colloquium in April 2024.
view moreCredit: © Natália Ružičková | ISTA
International meetings offer researchers worldwide the chance to explore the cutting edge of science, generate new ideas, and strike up collaborations. Having a wide geographical distribution of attendees is often regarded as a mark of success. However, researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) are now calling this into question by seeking to quantify the environmental impact of international conference travel. Their results, published in the journal Magnetic Resonance, could help researchers make informed decisions and adopt more climate-conscious mindsets.
Every effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can help us combat the rampant effects of global warming. While research on sustainability practices is making progress in various aspects of our lives, academic research itself has a considerable environmental footprint that must not be overlooked. In its commitment to sustainable research, the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) actively raises awareness of this topic and seeks effective strategies to mitigate the climate impact of research.
As data is often missing, ISTA Sustainability Manager Jeroen Dobbelaere and professors Paul Schanda and Georgios Katsaros sought to tackle this issue head-on in 2023. They developed a course to quantify the footprint of research practices as part of the ISTA Graduate School curriculum. “Together with the registered students, we sought to tackle one topic a year,” says Dobbelaere. “We designed the course with a focus on mentoring and project-based data analysis culminating with a presentation to the campus community.”
Their results on the carbon footprint of conference travel in the field of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) have now been published in the journal Magnetic Resonance, an interactive open-access publication of the Groupement AMPERE.
Rising post-pandemic emissions
Multiple academic research activities have a high impact on the climate. These include the production of chemicals and other research consumables as well as the construction and maintenance of research buildings, facilities, and equipment. However, other factors such as commuting to work and conference travel weigh in the balance. One of these factors, the carbon footprint of travel in academia, is of particular interest as it has again started rising considerably after the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
“In-person meetings have a quality that online conferences simply cannot provide,” says Schanda. “Many of us had brilliant ideas—or thought so at the time—while having a drink with a colleague after a poster session.” Such unique opportunities can hardly be offered in an online setting. Thus, although online-only conferences have a considerably lower carbon footprint, they do not provide scientists with a comparable experience to in-person meetings.
Accounting for the ‘hidden’ carbon costs
When the course was first offered during the 2023-24 academic year, the team examined the environmental impact of conference travel in the case of NMR. “Considering the substantial carbon footprint of airplane travel, we asked if train travel was an alternative,” says Dobbelaere. According to ISTA PhD graduate Natália Ružičková, one of the course participants and study authors, it is “common knowledge” that trains are less polluting than airplanes. “But there is a ‘but’: these calculations do not include the cost of infrastructure. While a plane only needs two airports, running a train requires tracks, tunnels, and bridges connecting the origin and the destination. And building and maintaining these tracks costs CO2,” she says.
To tackle this issue methodically and account for the ‘hidden’ carbon costs, the course participants made a detailed model that also includes the indirect effects from laying tracks and building train stations. By estimating the ‘real’ CO2 footprint of travel to various European cities from Vienna, the team still confirmed that train travel had a substantially more planet-friendly impact than flights. “We found that while the infrastructure emissions associated with a train journey are around three times as high as the CO2 footprint of actually running the train—meaning the emissions shown by travel apps—, traveling by train still saves on average 85% of CO2 as compared to the same journey by flight,” explains Ružičková. However, this effect was less clear for long trips exceeding 3,000 kilometers.
More CO2 than half a year’s worth of research
Next, the scientists took a closer look at the travel emissions from ten international NMR conferences over the past decade. The researchers showed that traveling to an overseas conference generates a substantial carbon footprint of four to five tons per participant. This is the case, for example, for traveling from Europe to ENC-ISMAR in California. “We compared this data to emissions directly related to research activities in NMR at our institute. It turns out that traveling from Europe to one such overseas conference has a higher carbon footprint than half a year of making samples, running experiments, and scientific computing in NMR at ISTA, combined, per person,” says Schanda. While Austria has a 17% share of fossil fuels, research-related emissions are higher in countries with a more fossil-heavy energy mix, such as Germany, which has more than double Austria’s share.
Climate-conscious conference attendance
By examining additional scenarios, the team made another important finding regarding conference locations. They explored the possibility of decentralized conferences within Europe—that is, meetings held simultaneously at multiple locations and connected virtually. “Such decentralized conferences offer attendees the chance to travel to the conference location closer to their home institution, resulting in carbon savings of up to 25%,” says Dobbelaere.
While the study considered the example of NMR, the authors hope that their results will help researchers make informed, climate-conscious decisions about conference travel in various fields. Next, Dobbelaere, Schanda, and Katsaros will continue their efforts by tackling new topics in their course. “Last year, we addressed the carbon footprint of commuting. In the present academic year, we have started exploring the environmental impact of scientific computing,” says Dobbelaere.
CO2 saved by taking the train. Data collected by course participants Natália Ružičková, Valentin Leitner, and Cecelia Mweka, presented at an ISTA Special Institute Colloquium in April 2024.
Credit
© Natália Ružičková | ISTA
Journal
Magnetic Resonance
Method of Research
Case study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Quantifying the carbon footprint of conference travel: the case of NMR meetings
Article Publication Date
10-Nov-2025
COP webpages emit seven times more
carbon than average sites
University of Edinburgh
Websites produced for COP conferences emit up to seven times more carbon than average internet pages, new research suggests.
Ahead of this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP30, researchers have revealed a sharp increase in the carbon emissions generated by the conference’s websites over time.
Analysis indicates that between 1995 – when the first Conference of the Parties (COP) was held – and 2024, average emissions from COP conference websites have risen by more than 13,000%.
While the increase is partly a consequence of huge growth in computing power and internet use – the internet now accounts for up to three per cent of all emissions – the carbon footprint of COP sites is still significantly higher than the average webpage, the team says.
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh analysed web archive data to assess changes in the carbon footprint of COP websites over a 30-year period.
Their findings indicate that emissions remained relatively low until COP14 in 2008, with sites emitting the equivalent of 0.02g carbon per page view.
However, from COP15 onwards, emissions have risen sharply, with pages on average emitting the equivalent of more than 2.4g of carbon per visit, with some emitting substantially more. The average website emits the equivalent of 0.36g of carbon per page view, the team says.
The rise corresponded with COP pages increasingly using content that requires greater computing power, such as multimedia files, experts say.
As well as revealing an increase in the environmental impact of COP websites themselves, the team’s findings also indicate that emissions caused by internet traffic to the pages have risen exponentially.
Website views during COP3 in 1997 – the first year with available data – emitted the equivalent of 0.14kg, roughly the amount of carbon that a mature tree can absorb in two days.
In contrast, it would take up to 10 mature trees a full year to absorb the levels of carbon emitted as a result of COP29 homepage visits alone – 116.85kg – an increase of more than 83,000%.
Researchers say it is too early to calculate carbon emissions from the COP30 website, but highlight that it is not hosted on verified renewable energy infrastructure.
Based on their analysis, the researchers make a number of practical recommendations for reducing the digital footprint of websites. These include placing strict limits on page sizes, optimising site layouts and hosting websites on servers powered by renewable energy.
The analysis is the first example of web archives, such as the Internet Archive, being used to track websites’ environmental impact over time, the team says.
The innovative approach – using bespoke computer code that has been made freely available – could be used to assess the historical environmental impact of other internet pages, they add.
The findings are published in the journal PLOS Climate.
Professor Melissa Terras, of the Institute for Design Informatics at Edinburgh College of Art, said: “The digital footprint of websites, and how they have grown over time, deserves further scrutiny. In this innovative use of web archives as a data source to measure how websites have expanded, we chose first to look at the COP conferences themselves, given they are the focus of so much discussion on climate change. Our research shows that the carbon cost of digital presence is often overlooked by even those who care about, and are meant to protect, the environment. We hope that our recommendations, and our tool, can help institutions identify and tackle this issue.”
PhD student David Mahoney, of the Institute for Design Informatics at Edinburgh College of Art, said: “While AI rightly captures much of today’s attention, websites remain the longest-standing and most widespread form of human–computer interaction, and one of the largest contributors to the internet’s environmental impact. Our work shows how reusing web archives can expose this growing blind spot, even among organisations at the heart of climate discussions, and help identify practical ways to cut digital emissions.”
Professor Frauke Zeller, of the Institute for Design Informatics at Edinburgh College of Art, said: “We are excited to showcase this innovative research and how it creates impact on a wider academic, societal and international scale. The Institute for Design Informatics is a unique place to develop innovative data analysis tools in an interdisciplinary collaboration between Arts/Humanities and Informatics research, which aim to make a difference not just in academic contexts but also in society.”
Journal
PLOS Climate
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Publication Date
10-Nov-2025
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