The potential of virtual reality meetings in international research projects for greenhouse gas emission mitigation

Purpose - European Union (EU) research projects generally involve international teams based in different countries. This means that researchers need to travel internationally to participate for in-person meetings, which are crucial for facilitating collaboration among research teams and provide a platform for teams to share their progress. Unfortunately, much of the international traveling in EU projects is done by air and therefore it has a significant carbon footprint. One potential solution that has gained attention in recent years is virtual reality (VR) and the metaverse. The aim of this work is to investigate to what degree VR meetings provide a viable alternative to physical meetings in the context of EU research projects and can thus contribute to climate change mitigation. Design/methodology/approach - A three-stepped approach was chosen. First, the requirements for VR meetings were determined by collecting all relevant aspects of physical meetings through a questionnaire. Second, a set of VR meeting experiments were designed and executed. Third, carbon footprints for both physical traveling and VR meetings (lifecycle) were calculated. Findings - We conclude that VR can be a powerful tool which can supplement international projects and mitigate carbon emissions associated with traveling for in-person meetings by an estimated 7–19 times. Originality/value - This paper explores the suitability of the current generation of VR technology and quantitatively evaluates its effectiveness for greenhouse gas emissions mitigation in the context of a European research project.