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Before coming to work here at IMASTE, I knew very little about the world of virtual events and tradeshows, but as I have poured through articles, tweets, and blogs over the past months I’ve been impressed and amazed by what I’ve learned. The potential this industry possesses and the arguments in favour of adopting at the very least a hybrid model event seemed incredibly overwhelming to me. Who wouldn’t want to reduce their cost and extend their audience reach?

As I have become more knowledgeable in the area I’ve pushed myself to imagine the advances virtual events could make, and the changes they could impart on society, as innovation continues to evolve this emerging industry. However, in light of the Copenhagen Conference, I have been reminded of the great things virtual events already CAN do for society. Specifically, they can help to reduce our ever increasing carbon footprint. This led me to ask myself, exactly how big is the carbon footprint of a physical event and how much does a virtual event reduce this?

I searched the web for some enlightenment, to no avail, until I stumbled upon www.climatetrust.org. On this website, I found a very thorough “Carbon Calculator for Events”. Using Trade Show Week’s 2008 Tradeshow Statistics, some conservative guestimates, and statistics from an event powered by IMASTE I was able to make some interesting discoveries.

I first decided to calculate the Carbon Emission for the average Tradeshow. In 2008 the average trade show had 31,539 attendees and was provided in a 101,505 square foot event area. Conservatively assuming that the average trade show lasted 2 days, that 50% of attendees travelled by car an average roundtrip of 300 miles, that 50% travelled by plane an average roundtrip of 4 hours and that only 50% sough lodging for one night the carbon emissions resulted in 14,072 metric tons.

I then decided to calculate the emissions for all tradeshows. This part was a little tricky, I admit, as it is difficult to make assumptions on lodging and travel. As a result I tried to use the most conservative assumptions possible. In 2008 there were 6,597,850 trade show attendees across the US and the total square footage was 1,955,389 sq. ft. Conservatively assuming that 70% of attendees drove a roundtrip average of 300 miles, that 30% flew an average of four hours, and that only 20% sought lodging for one night the total carbon emission for 2008 were 2,044,880 metric tons.

Since I could not find any data dictating statistics on neither the average virtual event or in total for them all, I decided to use MonsterUK’s E-days as an example. In total there were 166,000 visits and an average visit of five minutes and thirty-two seconds per visit. Using the EPA’s Carbon Calculator I was able to find that the average laptop emits .00718 metric tons an hour multiplied by 14,719 hours of use gives a total carbon emission of 106 metric tons.

While the average tradeshow had only 19% of the attendees that MonsterUK’s E-days, E-day’s produced a mere 0.7% of the carbon emissions of an average tradeshow, or in other words 142 times less. I knew the footprint of a virtual event would be significantly smaller than that of a physical one but I was blown away by just how much.

My conclusion: maybe the Copenhagen Conference should promote the use of more virtual events, as well as itself had hosted at least a hybrid event.

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