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Diagram of the emissions tracking workflow: copy the convening template, fill the event budget while lines classify themselves, confirm the emissions tab and enter hotel info while emissions calculate automatically, then add travel data and confirm.

Building Climate Awareness into Event Planning

  • Summer Internship (Community Team)
  • Schmidt Sciences Convenings
  • Summer 2026

Solo project

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This tool aims to help build a credible, repeatable way to measure and report the carbon footprint of Community Team Schmidt Science convenings. By standing up the AirTable + Automations foundation, emissions tracking becomes a routine, low-effort part of post-event work.

The long-term initiative: make carbon emissions a routine factor of consideration in all phases of event planning, so the Community Team can report real, credible emission reductions over the long term, using this tool as a foundation.

Short-Term Goal & Layered Wins

  • Leadership reporting + transparency
  • Realistic target goals for carbon emissions
  • Inform and track relevant short/long term reduction strategies
  • Support value-chain insetting & offsetting
  • Quantify footprints to support Global Net Zero
  • Eventually inform planning decisions (emissions-aware choices, when it’s viable)

Project Roadmap

Project roadmap: 1 Airtable data audit, 2 research reporting standards, 3 narrow scope based on the audit, 4 draft methodology and NAICS guide, 5.1 travel support via Take2Eton and 5.2 peer review via Foxall Munro, 6 emissions for three test pilots, 7 built automated Airtable infrastructure.

What Data is Already Tracked?

Data audit: attendee travel is strongly tracked through travel manifests; venue and hotel info are partially tracked; food and beverages, food recovery and other goods are weakly tracked; water, electricity, waste and carbon offsets are not tracked at all.

Methodology & Boundaries

Emissions are accounted for under the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol — Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard. Scope 3 covers indirect, value-chain emissions, which is basically everything not from fuel we burn directly or electricity we buy. For a typical SSci convening, this is the overwhelming majority of the footprint.

Methodology diagram under GHG Protocol Scope 3: Category 6 attendee long-distance travel from travel manifests; Category 1 purchased goods and services, spend-based with EPA supply-chain factors mapped by NAICS code; and hotel and venue, by region and room-nights using Cornell CHSB factors. Capital goods, fuel and energy, waste and food recovery, commuting and other categories are out of scope.

Emissions Tracking Workflow

Complete your standard budget entries, and the system automatically generates and categorizes the carbon line items in the Carbon Emissions tab. After you input the lodging and travel figures alongside a few minor decisions, the final footprint computes automatically.

Workflow in four stages: new event, budget, emissions tab and finalize, with existing steps, automatic steps and new steps marked; about 15 to 30 minutes of added human effort per event.

Pilot Calculations

Pilot calculations for three convenings: VESRI Calibration Workshop, Washington DC, 54.1 t CO2e (1.32 t per attendee); AI × Econ Convening, Phoenix, 72.0 t (1.33 t per attendee); Cross-OBVI Convening, Cape Town, 159.0 t (3.70 t per attendee). Attendee travel is 65 to 86 percent of each footprint.
The Event Emissions Dashboard in Airtable: 4 events calculated, an average of 106.6 tons of CO2e per event, and a bar chart breaking each event's emissions into attendee travel, food, hotel and all other emissions, with travel by far the largest.
Event Emissions Dashboard in Airtable

Partners

Take2Eton: Travel Management & Event Solutions

The team’s travel vendor. Take2Eton supplies per-event attendee travel (flight and rail) emissions, calculated on the DEFRA/DESNZ basis with radiative forcing and broken out by event, travel class, and haul. This is delivered as part of each event’s final spend report, so the largest and hardest-to-estimate category (attendee travel) comes to us accurately, at the source, rather than being estimated in-house.

Foxall Munro: Sustainability Consultancy

Provides methodology peer review and reduction / target-setting strategy. Founded by Damian Foxall and Amy Munro; creators of the open-access Sustainability Toolbox; known for their work with 11th Hour Racing and Ocean Hour Farm.