Travel
Footprint of transnational face-to-face meetings vs. online meetingsObjectives
- Make transnational meetings more sustainable: reduce their CO2 footprint
Green Value indicator
CO2 savingsExplanation
Project management usually involves all kinds of different meetings: local, regional, national or transnational. Transnational meetings are an important element in the management of EU projects. Meeting transnationally implies the fact that people must cover large distances to convene. In Europe, this is currently mainly done by air travel which in terms of CO2 emissions is very costly compared to trains.To give you an example: take the Think Twice! transnational kick-off meeting. Due to the COVID-19 travel restrictions in 2020 and 2021 our project team could not meet in person, so the meeting was virtual. Under normal circumstances, two persons for seven travelling organisations would have travelled to Leipzig by plane.
A two-way journey roughly emits the following quantities of CO2 for one person:
- Larnaca - Leipzig: 700 kg of CO2
- Porto - Leipzig: 540 kg of CO2
- Ljubljana – Leipzig: 170 kg of CO2
- Barcelona – Leipzig: 380 kg of CO2
- Patras Araxos – Leipzig: 460 kg of CO2
- Teesside– Leipzig: 300kg of CO2
- Rome – Leipzig: 300 kg of CO2
But instead of 14 people travelling, 11 people met online over two days, for three hours each day, so 6 hours in total. A one-hour video-call is estimated to emit around 183 g CO2/: 6 x 11 x 0.183 (kg of CO2) = 12kg of CO2 for the meeting.
Even though CO2 emissions arising from accommodation, venue spaces and fancy caterings are not considered here it is obvious that in the case of transnational meetings, online options are considerably lower in their environmental and carbon footprints.
To remind you, globally annual CO2 emissions should not exceed 1.5 tonnes of CO2 per person. Only by attending a few physical transnational meetings travelling by plane gets you close to this value. So, before your next transnational meeting think twice and ask yourselves: do we need to travel long distances to meet in person or can we have an online meeting? If you deem a face-to-face meeting necessary, is it possible to take terrestrial transport instead? You can read more on that in other good practice examples related to transport.
PROS/CONS of the action
Pros:- online meetings save large quantities of CO2 compared to physical transnational meetings
- online meetings save time and are faster and easier to organize
- less paper and plastic usage
- lack of social aspects of an in-person meeting: socializing is harder and human interaction reduced
- failing to network
- some things are easier to discuss face to face
- poorer quality of project results due to reduced communication
Certified
Not CertifiedLink to useful sources
Comparison of the energy, carbon and time costs of videoconferencing and in-person meetingsThe Social, Environmental, and Economic Advantages of Virtual Events
Carbon Savings for Virtual Meetings
For the calculation of the CO2-emissions of air travel you can use Carbon Calculator:
