M&E Sustainability Symposium Takes No-Holds-Barred Look At the Value of Green Initiatives Driven by CO2 Calculations

By Fred Dawson

Europe’s commitment to promoting climate sustainability practices in the M&E industry appears to be getting stronger even as uncertainties about methods and outcomes grow in tandem with an intensifying global climate crisis.

This was the good-news/bad-news perspective on recent developments emerging from the latest symposium in the Sustainability Expert Series on October 17, 2023, produced by Broadcast Projects and sponsored by Greening of Streaming. Tuning into the event was a little like watching a scene from a monster movie where the beast, in this case climate change, is batting away attacking forces like flies.

But when the dust settled on the candid two-hour back-and-forth among some of the leading voices on the sustainability front lines in Europe, it was clear that, no matter what the obstacles to optimum results might be, there’s a dogged commitment to staying the course. This should serve as an inspiration to Media & Entertainment producers worldwide who are battling the combination of inertia and pessimism about end results that afflicts multiple industries.

The can-do spirit is driving the European Union’s executive branch, as confirmed by symposium participant Martin Dawson, who serves as deputy head of Audiovisual Industry and Media Support Programmes at the European Commission. Dawson acknowledged that when it comes to assessing what producers’ true carbon footprints are, we’re a long way from Nirvana. “The dream would be to have reliable comprehensive data as a whole on carbon emissions,” he said.

But he asserted that doesn’t diminish the need for a means of pulling together the currently available measures of emissions resulting from TV and film production. Referring to the EU’s plans to designate a common approach to carbon calculation for M&E use in the 27-nation alliance next year, he observed, “We’re at the beginning of the journey; we have to get there step by step.”

The Circular Economy Perspective on Sustainability

The debate over what to measure or whether M&E-directed carbon calculators like the EU’s forthcoming platform or the one used in the UK’s Albert emissions-reduction certification program are even on the right path served as the fulcrum for discussion in this edition of the symposium series. As reflected in the symposium’s title, “The Circular Economy, Carbon Calculators & Media Policy,” a big challenge to the rationale behind current M&E sustainability agendas is embodied in the circular economy concept promulgated by Walter Stahel, co-founder and director of the Product Life Institute in Geneva.

Addressing the symposium, Stahel stressed that while carbon calculators can be useful, they should not distract from the need for a broader perspective on the fight against climate change, as he advocates in his widely heralded book, “The Circle Economy: A User’s Guide.” When asked whether a “carbon myopic focus is more harmful than good,” Stahel replied, “I think it’s harmful,” but quickly added, “It all depends on context.”

As described in a 2016 article Stahel authored for Nature, the circular-economy perspective guides his work at the non-profit Product Life Institute and as a lecturer at the University of Surrey in the U.K. and at Montreal’s Institut EDDEC (Environnement, Développement Durable et Economie Circulaire). “A ‘circular economy,’ he wrote, “would turn goods that are at the end of their service life into resources for others, closing loops in industrial ecosystems and minimizing waste.”

The idea is to replace production with sufficiency, which means “reuse what you can, recycle what cannot be reused, repair what is broken, remanufacture what cannot be repaired.” Stahel cited research covering seven European nations that found “a shift to a circular economy would reduce each nation's greenhouse-gas emissions by up to 70% and grow its workforce by about 4% - the ultimate low-carbon economy.”

This entails embracing business models that follow one of two tracks: “those that foster reuse and extend service life through repair, remanufacture, upgrades and retrofits; and those that turn old goods into as-new resources by recycling the materials.” In a world built on the circular economy principle, “ownership gives way to stewardship; consumers become users and creators. The remanufacturing and repair of old goods, buildings and infrastructure creates skilled jobs in local workshops.”

But while a heavy focus on reducing carbon emissions may be a diversion from achieving a revamped circular economy, at least it’s producing immediately tangible benefits. As Stahel himself noted at the symposium, the challenges that attend operating from the circular economy perspective are monumental in light of the imbalance between the anthropogenic mass of the industrialized world and where things stand everywhere else.

Defined as the total mass of man-made objects, the global anthropogenic mass is now greater than the sum of the earth’s biomass, according to calculations previously cited by Stahel. Applying circular economy principles to managing anthropogenic mass “could be the decisive factor of our society surviving,” he said during the symposium.

But the amount of anthropogenic mass that underdeveloped countries would have to create to put their economies on par with the industrialized world, as most aspire to do, would represent an explosive contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. Depicting the economic divide in terms of North and South, Stahel said those in the North “would have to reduce our anthropogenic new mass by about 90 percent in order to let the South develop new anthropogenic mass to produce their infrastructures for schools, health, education, shelter, all these things.”

The Need for Smarter Use of Carbon Calculators

Other speakers made strong cases for why the focus on carbon emissions with the aid of carbon calculators is essential, notwithstanding the immensity of the challenge described by Stahel. A far-reaching example of how investment funding can be used to induce green M&E agendas was described by Tim Wagendorp, the sustainability coordinator for Belgium-based Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds (VAF), a non-profit devoted to channeling investment funding under Flemish community policy guidance to the independent professional audiovisual and gaming sector in Flanders.

To obtain VAF-backed funding, large productions must use the firm’s chosen calculator, known as Eureca, to assess what the carbon footprint will be for a project. Smaller productions, in lieu of meeting that requirement, are required to choose sustainability steps they will take from a prepared list of responsible actions.

The funding, by relying in part on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to set the range of issues to be addressed by producers, establishes a much broader perspective on achieving sustainability than is typically the case with use of carbon calculators in M&E operations. Wagendorp said the mission is about “somehow linking behavioral science with sustainability and filmmaking.”

Beyond tallying carbon footprints, the goal is to create awareness that impacts all kinds of choices as a production unfolds, such as “between fetching or not fetching food” or choosing a “hotel near the set to reduce traveling.” Regarding sets, he said there’s a need to store materials for future use rather than throwing everything away when a project concludes.

Thinking “let’s measure CO2 then everybody’s happy, that’s not enough,” Wagendorp said. “Can we exchange best practices, can we create synergies, can we learn from each other, can we get the bridge between science and our industry?”

That bridge includes tapping engineering knowhow, which can help in making choices such as which animation tool is best from a sustainability perspective. “Many calculators can’t see if animation tool “a” is better than “b” or “c,” he said. Notably, he added, a sustainable animation guide has been produced in France “linking science with information specialists.”

Citing the chaos surrounding use of Eureca amid companies’ adherence to analysis from myriad other calculators, Wagendorp stressed the need for the common European M&E carbon calculator described by Martin Dawson. There’s an enormous opportunity to do something meaningful based on all that’s been learned so far but also an enormous challenge to ensure the sustainability focus covers as many bases as possible, he said. The goal should be “to work together and co-create instead of having yet another platform with basic tools for yet another guideline on green production.”

Wagendorp said that, along with looking at ways to reduce emissions, there needs to be a lot of attention given to how people adapt to climate change and how they approach personal consumption, which goes to the messaging side of what broadcasters and social media can do to contribute to sustainability. And he noted the sustainability mindset also needs to take into account other key issues impacting society having to do with biodiversity, education, health, and economic inequality.

In the final analysis, Wagendorp sounded a theme similar to Stahel’s on the value of calculators. “For me, looking at the tool, it’s not magic,” he said. “It’s just a compass.”

The Eureca calculator, beyond aggregating carbon measures, provides guidance on things to think about that may not be directly measurable. For example, the tool broadens awareness by pointing out nuances like the variations not only in travel emission impacts but also what goes into the productions of cars commonly used in different countries.

The VAF goal is to bring company-wide buy-in to a sustainability state of mind. It’s about the whole value chain, he said, adding, “It can’t just be about being carbon neutral in production and the rest doesn’t interest me.”

The Success Story Out of Ireland

Much of what Wagendorp and Sahel said was seconded by two executives from Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), Ireland’s national television and radio broadcaster. But they made clear their experience shows there has been real progress resulting from their reliance on the albert carbon calculator to measure the results of sustainability initiatives under the watchful eye of RTÉ’s Green Broadcaster Advisory Group. Speaking of how the company addresses production projects, Eileen Duggan, manager of sustainability and environment services at RTÉ, said, “We’re in the privileged position to discuss nuts and bolts. We’re a million miles from where we were ten years ago.”

The application of the calculator in production operations as overseen by RTÉ sustainability administrator Nicki Rocca has led to albert program compliance certification of over 100 of the network’s productions. Acknowledging this is a long way from the grand ambitions of a circular economy, Rocca said, “We can’t control everything. We’re in the business of making TV programs. We can only manage our own circles of control.”

Those efforts extend beyond just the considerations that go into reducing the carbon footprints of production machinery. The biggest impact comes with getting people to think about how to reduce the amount of fossil fuel they use in travel for program productions, Rocca said.

Other things producers are asked to pay attention to include details like opportunities to reuse props whenever possible and green-conscious choices of studios used in production.

The Emergence of Government-Mandated Use of Carbon Calculators

The use of the albert calculator is now mandated throughout the broadcast industry in the U.K. Such a mandate could emerge within the EU as well.

Dawson hinted this could happen once a common approach to calculating emissions is agreed on as a replacement to the 12 or so incompatible approaches now in use across Europe. Given that much of the broadcast output in Europe is publicly funded, it makes sense that the authorities would make green consciousness in production a stipulation for the common good, he said.

This more aggressive application of calculator technology dovetails with the general state of mind among European governing bodies as described at the outset of the symposium in a new series feature dubbed “Media Policy Weather Report.” For example, there’s growing momentum toward “trying to figure out how to regulate new services,” noted John Enser, an attorney who specializes in media as a partner at the CMS UK law firm.

This even extends to a move in the U.K. to regulate linear programming guides embedded in smart TVs. “What that means is that once you start regulating EPGs, you’ll be regulating all the services available through those EPGs,” Enser said. “We’re seeing gradual regulatory encroachment into the streaming world,” he added. This includes rules requiring providers to notify subscribers when their subscriptions are expiring rather than just automatically renewing them without notification.

Such laws don’t sit well with many people in M&E, including Enser, who described them as part of a “protectionist world where government is being the nanny state about regulation.” He said he’s “seeing this across territories and different areas of service.”

But there’s generally a welcoming attitude in the M&E community toward more sustainability-oriented regulation. Turning to new developments in that vein, Enser said, “Looking on the brighter side, we are seeing companies around Europe now being subject to new rules coming into force in terms of environmental disclosures.”

“That’s a good thing,” he added. “It shines a light on things and brings more transparency.” He suggested carbon calculators could be a big help in that regard.

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Other reporting on this event:

The Flint.Media

Rethink TV (requires subscription) - see: IP-based EPGs face regulation, as govs tighten streaming grasp

Video Replay (17th October Event)

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