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Show Organizer Commits 100-Plus Associations to Huge Event-Emissions Cut

AIM Group International signs the Net Zero Carbon Events pledge rolled out at November’s U.N. Global Climate Summit. The first deadline for action: end of 2023.

On December 15, AIM Group International, a firm that executes conferences and trade shows for at least 60 Italian associations and 45 international associations, announced that it signed the Net Zero Carbon Events pledge. Gaining traction across the global meetings and events industry, this pledge commits an organization to achieve the greatly reduced greenhouse-gas targets set by the United Nations’ Paris Climate Accord of 2015.

By signing on, AIM Group agrees to publish by the end of 2023 its plan to achieve 50-percent emission cuts by 2030 for the events it works on. Further, the pledge commits the firm to achieve net-zero event emissions by 2050 at the latest.

“We are convinced that achieving a sustainable long-term and prosperous future for the events industry depends upon finding new ways to meet, learn, and engage that support the health of our planet,” said Annalisa Ponchia, innovation director of AIM Group International, in a press release. “We are proud to be a signatory to the Net Zero Carbon Events initiative, which we see as a key driver for change in our business. We believe that such change can only be achieved collectively, and we are committed to joining our industry peers on this challenging but crucial journey.”

The initiative was first presented at the U.N.’s Global Climate Summit COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, on November 10. In the months before the summit, the Joint Meetings Industry Council got more than one hundred stakeholders from across the global events sector to assist in drafting the pledge, including MeetingsNet’s parent company Informa. Ponchia noted that it is “the most inclusive collaborative action within the events sector for tackling the challenge of climate change.”

As for finalizing a plan within two years that will achieve the 2030 emissions-reduction requirement and then the 2050 requirement, “AIM Group will involve all partners and suppliers and collaborate with clients to drive change across the entire value chain,” Ponchia said. “To track progress towards those targets, we will measure our emissions of greenhouse gases according to industry best practices and report our progress at least every two years.”

The Net Zero Carbon Events initiative also pushes pledged organizations to communicate the industry’s commitment to getting to net zero emissions by 2050; construct an industry-wide roadmap for doing so; develop common methodologies for measuring the industry’s direct, indirect, and supply-chain greenhouse-gas emissions; and establish common mechanisms for reporting progress and sharing best practices.

More on the Net Zero Carbon Events pledge can be found here.

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