Cutting the carbon emission of international conferences: is decentralization an option?

Members of the scientific community often attend international conferences to disseminate and gather information. Scientists must often travel a substantial distance to attend these conferences, and this travel has an impact on carbon emissions. Decentralization of an international conference through the use of multiple venues could reduce overall travel distance and thus carbon emissions, but planners must find a balance between carbon reduction and the number of scientists per venue so that each venue constitutes a useful scientific forum by itself. This study applies an optimization model to a case study to examine the decentralized conference concept. The findings from this case study suggest that a carefully designed decentralization would allow a reduction in carbon emissions without requiring undesirable compromises. However, decentralization could change the way conferences are organized and the way that participants use them, and may face opposition by the scientific community.