CERN FCC Week: The Hidden Costs of Unsustainable Conferences

I want to share my thoughts on an important issue: how major international conferences add to global pollution. As someone concerned about sustainability, I’ve become more and more aware of the high environmental cost of these large-scale events, especially when they require thousands of attendees to travel long distances by plane.

Let’s consider a specific example: FCC Week 2024, the annual meeting of the Future Circular Collider study, held in San Francisco from 10 to 14 June 2024. It brought together more than 450 participants to discuss plans for a new generation of particle accelerators. CERN does not publish how many of its staff attended. Suppose 100 of them flew from Geneva.

While such scientific gatherings are crucial for advancing research and collaboration, they come with a heavy carbon footprint that cannot be ignored. The emissions from transportation alone for an event of this scale are staggering.

To better understand the impact, let’s calculate the approximate CO2 emissions such a group would produce flying from Geneva to San Francisco:

• Distance between Geneva and San Francisco: about 9,400 km each way as the crow flies, so close to 19,000 km for the round trip
• CO2 emissions per economy passenger for the round trip: roughly 1.6 metric tons (carbon calculators differ, and counting the non-CO2 warming effects of flying would raise the figure)
• Total CO2 emissions for 100 passengers: 100 x 1.6 = 160 metric tons

On that assumption, the delegation’s travel alone would produce about 160 metric tons of CO2. To put that into perspective, the average person on Earth emits about 4.7 metric tons of CO2 a year from fossil fuels. Those flights would equal the annual emissions of about 34 average people.

We also need to consider what this travel would cost CERN. Assuming an average economy ticket price of $1,000 for a Geneva-San Francisco round trip:

• 100 tickets x $1,000 = $100,000 just in airfare costs

And this doesn’t even account for additional expenses like accommodation, local transportation, and meals during the conference stay. With those included, a rough estimate of the total for such a delegation is several hundred thousand dollars, possibly as much as half a million.

The climate damage can be priced too. A 2022 study in Nature put the social cost of carbon at about $185 per metric ton of CO2. On that figure, 100 round trips would do roughly $30,000 of damage. That is a damage estimate; buying offsets would cost a different amount.

This is even more surprising when compared to the actions of other large companies. Apple, for example, cut travel spending to avoid layoffs and continue investing in innovation (source: Bloomberg).

Is CERN falling behind its peers here too?

These back-of-the-envelope calculations show the environmental toll and the budgetary cost when an organisation has to fly a large contingent halfway across the world for a conference. And this is just one event. If we extrapolate to the numerous major scientific meetings happening annually worldwide, the cumulative impact becomes even more concerning.

So what can be done? How can we minimize this pollution while still allowing vital knowledge-sharing and collaboration to take place?

One approach could be to prioritize virtual and hybrid conferences. The pandemic forced events to go online, proving that meaningful meetings and presentations can indeed happen remotely. Virtual options should be expanded even for in-person conferences, reducing the need for every participant to travel. Sessions could be live-streamed, with only a core group of essential personnel present physically.

Video conferencing tools have become very capable, allowing real-time engagement, Q&A sessions, and even virtual “hangouts” for more informal networking. Screen-sharing capabilities enable effective collaboration on documents and presentations.

For conferences that still require significant in-person attendance, carbon offsetting schemes could be introduced, with a percentage of registration fees going towards environmental initiatives like reforestation or renewable energy projects to counterbalance emissions.

Regional hubs could be set up to cut travel distances. For example, CERN could have hosted the FCC meeting at its home facility, with real-time virtual links to partner labs and universities across Europe, North America, and Asia. Only core organizers and presenters would need to travel to the main Geneva venue.

Of course, no solution is perfect, and some compromises may be inevitable. But we must strike a balance between the benefits of conferences and minimizing their environmental toll through creative approaches.

Scientific progress and knowledge-sharing are critical, but it would be tragically ironic if the very pursuit of that progress contributed significantly to rendering our planet uninhabitable due to climate change. As researchers, we have an ethical duty to lead by example.

What are your thoughts? Is it worth sending a large delegation to an FCC Week?

@online{scienceshot-cern-fcc-week-a-2024,
  author       = {Piro, Viros},
  title        = {{CERN FCC Week: The Hidden Costs of Unsustainable Conferences}},
  organization = {ScienceShot},
  date         = {2024-06-16},
  year         = {2024},
  url          = {https://scienceshot.com/post/cern-fcc-week-a-case-study-in-unsustainable-conferences}
}