How will academic meetings look in a future where we combat climate change?

Discussing science, exchanging ideas, and engaging the new generation of biologists are core values of The Company of Biologists, and we are constantly looking for new ways to do this in an open, inclusive, and environmentally responsible way.The Company of Biologists' Innovative ideas for the future of sustainable events essay competition gathered many ideas on how innovation will shape the way academics network at scientific meetings in a sustainable future. We received 31 submissions from all around the world (including the UK, France, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Bangladesh) that reflected local and global climate change challenges in organising academic events, and proposed solutions for how to mitigate them. In this article, we will summarise how we expect that innovation will support sustainable practices in the organisation process of academic events.As seen in Fig. 1, the most cited solutions were virtual reality (VR) and multi-hub systems, which were often cited together. Multi-hub systems are defined as organising the event in multiple decentralised physical hubs around the world, allowing participants to travel to the closest hub and reducing travel emissions. During the event, the hubs will be connected to each other remotely, allowing participants to interact in person with the other participants that are part of their hub, but also remotely with participants from other hubs.The participants of this competition challenged the classic single-hub system and the biggest environmental issue that it poses: unsustainable international travel. Combining these two elements together, the participants suggested a solution that reduces environmental impact while enhancing social inclusivity, creating solutions for people who live in less accessible regions to join an international event and experience in-person contact through VR solutions. VR brings us a step forward from the classic virtual and hybrid events by enhancing the human experience through solutions that increase engagement and motivation in remote settings (Kirchgessner et al., 2023). While these solutions may currently be more expensive, we highlight that they provide many benefits and discuss the importance of making them more accessible in the future. In a world that is transitioning to using more clean energy, many countries already have the infrastructure to run on renewable electricity sources, minimising the carbon footprint of VR technology's electricity usage. The UK alone has committed to fully transition to clean electricity by 2030 (Department for Energy Security for example, the EU is expected to raise the usage of sustainable aviation fuel only to 6% by 2030 (European Union, 2023). While an average long haul flight produces around 2 tonne of CO2e/person (based on The Company of Biologists’ carbon event calculator), while a video conference creates between 150–1000 g of CO2 emissions per hour, depending on the grid powering data centres (World Economic Forum, 2025). While VR becomes increasingly accessible and multi-hub formats more popular, these innovative solutions are particularly important for increasing participation among scientists based in the Global South or remote areas, as research states that in some particular fields of biology, such as genetics, there could still be a large gap in the representation of Global South and Global North scientists, which is particularly obvious when looking at abstract submissions and speaker opportunities. These gaps are mainly attributed to GBP and Nature Index Share, highlighting a persistent global inequality in scientific representation (Zheng et al., 2025). While Zheng's study focused mainly on two large genetics conferences over 25 years, similar gaps might exist in other fields of biology as well. Other highly cited concepts were the circular economy principles. Circular economy is a model of consumption and production that breaks away from the produce-consume-dispose system through three main aspects: extending the life of products, eliminating waste and pollution, and maintaining a regenerative natural system (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, n.d.). Prioritising venues and accommodation that mainly use regenerative energy sources (e.g. solar panels) helps align an event with the circular economy's third principle (i.e. regenerative nature) by indirectly reducing the extraction of non-regenerative resources such as petrol and natural gas for energy (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2022). This demonstrates that the academic event industry has the space to flourish in a sustainable economic system (prioritise regenerative resources), where waste is minimised or transformed into resources. Artificial intelligence (AI), while not as highly cited as the previous categories, was described as a tool to support innovation, accelerating new technology development, which will allow scientists to conduct their conferences with a lower environmental impact. Event emissions are mainly driven by the high carbon intensity travel modes that account for an average of 56% of the CO2e of an in-person event (Kitamura et al., 2020), and, based on the estimations made with The Company of Biologists' event carbon calculator, they can reach up to 90%. In 2020, it was estimated that a person attending an in-person academic event emits ∼80% of the CO₂e that they should be allowed to emit, based on the global average per person, per year by 2030, in order to limit the rise of global warming to 1.5 °C by 2050 (Jäckle, 2022). Since most recent papers suggest that we will probably exceed the 1.5 °C threshold over the next 20 years (E360 Digest, 2025), this poses an even more urgent need to reduce the carbon footprint per participant attending academic events. Finding the right balance that aligns with social and environmental considerations is challenging, but we are keen to be part of this transition. A significant role in minimising an academic event's environmental impact is reducing the reliance on fossil fuels and increasing renewable energy usage. Reducing these emissions is directly proportional to reducing participants' travelling emissions. This could be achieved by converting in-person events to hybrid/virtual formats and prioritising event locations that are well connected to public transport. For example, in Europe, it would be recommended to choose major rail hub locations such as Frankfurt, over isolated locations such as islands, which would require most of the participants to fly (Jäckle, 2022).Furthermore, converting to full plant-based menus for an event can reduce the catering carbon footprint by half compared with traditional meat-based menus (Scarborough et al., 2014). However, catering's environmental impact goes beyond its carbon footprint; it also concerns biodiversity loss, soil degradation, freshwater depletion, and deforestation as well (Prencipe et al., 2026; Takacs and Borrion, 2020). Even if, according to The Company of Biologists' carbon event calculator, the catering doesn't have a high carbon footprint compared to other aspects of an event, these other factors mentioned above increase the environmental impact of catering and need to be taken into consideration when building a sustainable menu for an event. For more details, check out The Company of Biologists' guides for how to build a sustainable menu (part 1 and part 2).Our essay competition received 31 submissions offering interesting and thoughtful solutions to improve the sustainability of academic conferencing. The Company of Biologists' sustainability committee had the challenging task of selecting the top three papers that offered the most innovative solutions for lowering the environmental impact of academic events. Liew Yao Rong (first prize) proposed a complex solution that involves changing participants' behaviour, venue decentralisation, and AI implementation. In the age of emerging AI technologies, implementing AI can aid not only in accelerating new sustainable technology development, but also in gathering data to track the sustainability progress in a more effective and accurate manner.Liew Yao Rong's solution combines multiple methodologies in one strategy that minimises many of the event's carbon footprint sources covered above by proposing a gamified system on participants' mobiles that encourages responsible behaviour while tracking the carbon footprint of all the participants' activities. It also proposed integrating AI to handle logistics and to find an ideal location for the event based on where the participants were located. This is crucial in international in-person events to calculate the most suitable location, or to identify decentralised multi-hubs for reducing participants' travelling carbon footprint. While AI is an indispensable tool capable of accelerating sustainable development and supporting all its pillars (ecological, social and economic), it also creates the ‘AI green paradox’; while it contributes to sustainable development, using AI comes with its own ecological footprint (Toderas, 2025). AI expansion has increased electricity demand from 1.9% in 2018 to 4.4% in 2023 in the US, with an expected demand of 6.7–12.7% by 2028 (Kim et al., 2026). Thus, AI should be used responsibly to maximise the sustainable development of events, while accounting for and balancing its carbon footprint.The second prize winner suggested an innovative solution that addressed the other main source of energy consumption of events: venues. Tan Hooi Wen reimagined traditional event venues into venues with integrated bio algae, creating a transition from events that release carbon to events that capture carbon through their activity. While traditional venues are highly energy-consuming, Tan Hooi Wen's proposals reflect how architecture development can correlate with event sustainability by integrating already existing solutions.Katherine Paine (third prize) highlighted the benefits of a system that brings together data on all upcoming conferences and their estimated carbon footprint, and making it available to the public. As her essay suggests, this information could help academics make more informed decisions about the cost-benefits of participating in an event.While the competition's winners offered great solutions to reimagine academic meeting organisation, many of the other participants brought insight into what else could be done to be more sustainable. Below, we analysed the most ambitious ideas we received and what their positive impact would be.While multi-hubs are not a new concept, they are is still not widely adopted as a method to organise events with a lower environmental impact. Yet, when combined with other methods, this could potentially reduce travelling emissions of an event by 78–97% (Jäckle, 2022). As Izebe Evbogame says, “As a teenager growing up in northern Nigeria, my first encounter with science was through a radio show. … Those moments ignited a dream in me, to one day speak at an international scientific conference. Years later, I found myself boarding a flight to Berlin for a neuroscience symposium. But while the flight connected me with brilliant minds, I couldn't shake the guilt I felt ….”.The positive impact of multi-hub events extends beyond environmental benefits. As Evbogame explains, “This model democratizes science. According to a UNESCO–UIS survey of global ocean-science conferences held between 2011 and 2018, only 1% of student participants were from sub-Saharan Africa, 2% from Northern Africa and Western Asia, and 2% from Central and Southern Asia.”. The multi-hub event format increases inclusivity and allows participation from less accessible locations, particularly for biologists that have a tight travel budget. As Chukwuemeka Chinaecherem Maryann mentioned, “The shift towards interconnected regional hubs, powered by immersive virtual experiences, isn't just a temporary fix; it's a fundamental reimagining of how scientific exchange can thrive in a travel-conscious era.”.Sally Lowell reported on a successful test of this idea when co-organising the European Society for Developmental Biology meeting in September 2023 in a multi-hub format in three European cities: Oxford, Paris and Barcelona. Liew Yao Rong also highlighted how this solution was a success at larger-scale events: “the embedded carbon footprint in travelling, for example hotel stays, contributes 20–30% of an attendee's carbon footprint due to the energy required for water, washing, lighting, and cooling (UNWTO, 2021). … A similar approach was taken at the COP26 summit, where technology was used to build off-site zones using modular pavilions in several locations to include more participants and minimise travel by 30% (UNFCCC, 2021).”.VR was one of the most frequently mentioned ideas in the submitted essays as a solution to reduce carbon emissions from event travel while maintaining the benefits of in-person interaction. We acknowledge that hybrid and virtual events could detract from the human experience of in-person events, and this was our fundamental motivation to create the Fund for Innovation in Sustainable Conferencing, which supports innovative solutions that enhance the ‘human’ experience in virtual meetings. While reality-enhancing technologies are not yet widely used in the events industry, they do not only reduce emissions linked to travel, but also “improve communication by reducing the pitfalls of social anxiety experienced by people during in-person meetings such as awkward encounters, moments of self-doubt, or the pressure to speak up without feeling fully prepared, which allows for more effective communication” (Fathimath Yania Shahid). As Kirchgessner et al. (2023) mentioned, VR increases motivation independently compared with traditional virtual conferencing settings (e.g. Zoom-based settings), regardless of whether participants have used VR technology before. The participants reported higher enjoyment and excitement in VR settings, with no difference in stress or focus when engaging compared with traditional remote settings.Engaging participants in accounting for the emissions of an event will be a great step towards identifying the sources that could be reduced more quickly. Using a gamifying system to involve participants in the data collection process will not only improve accuracy and reduce data collection time but will also encourage behaviour change by raising awareness about global warming and, as Akrish Bhandari mentioned in their essay, by “promoting pro-environmental behaviour by using motivation, social connection, and feedback mechanisms (Landers, 2019)”.A gamified app where participants can input their activity (travelling mode, meal options, etc.) so that their data are transformed into CO2e in real time. As Peter Whitehouse said in his essay, “The application would aim to ensure that no one is excluded from the sustainability discourse. It requires a basic smartphone, is intentionally low-energy, and possesses a significant level of reusability.”.Akrish Bhandari describes how the app could increase efficiency by using AI and recording historical data for meal preferences. Using AI, this data could be used to adjust the number of meal portions requested for the event and reduce food waste. As Akrish Bhandari describes “replacing a single beef meal with a vegetarian alternative can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 2.5 kg of CO₂ equivalent (Poore & Nemecek, (2018).”.Architecture innovation will reshape event venues by creating spaces that are more energy efficient and prioritise renewable sources. Tan Hooi Wen (second prize) proposes integrating algae in a system that absorbs energy instead of releasing it: “Zero-Footprint Hub is a microalgae biopanel system that uses photosynthesis to generate electricity. Non-toxic algae like Chlorella vulgaris absorb sunlight and produce a steady flow of electrons, powering low-energy devices such as sensors and microprocessors (Cambridge University, 2022). Simultaneously, the algae absorb CO₂, making the system carbon-negative through natural sequestration”. 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