August 2014
www.tvbeurope.com
TVBEurope 29 Feature
for cultures to change. And if you’ve been working for 12 hours in the rain, the last thing you may want to think about is how to deposit your waste. But in fi ve years we’ve seen a dramatic shift in terms of people’s acceptance that when they make a production that they make it in a sustainable way. The key things that you need are that the top management, the producer and line producer, buy into it, that they support the process. Then, ideally, you want a person on-set
gigabyte from here to there, you can’t attach a carbon value to that because it can happen in a number of ways.”
The broadcast industry’s output globally consumes a huge amount of power. A production could be entirely carbon neutral, recycling 100 per cent of its materials, but the delivery of the content itself and its playout across millions of screens has a carbon footprint so large, that any savings in production are absurdly small in comparison.
“It’s no good saying to people ‘This is all going to end in a disaster’, because people feel helpless and when they feel helpless, they do nothing” Georgina Stevens
who looks after the sustainability issues – that could be a runner, but you need someone who is going to be responsible for it, or it’s not going to get done. In the last year, we’ve trained about 28 people on our Greenshoot runner training course.”
Dirty clouds
The core of sustainability, especially as it impacts climate change, is energy use, and energy use in physical production is only a tiny fraction of the entire amount used throughout the industry, from development to delivery. Increasingly, content is produced in the world of IT— with a large proportion of a broadcaster’s energy use taken up in the running of servers for storage and processing. Increasingly, assets are being moved to the cloud, which might be shared anonymously with any number of other enterprises. “It is very diffi cult to
quantify,” says BAFTA’s Aaron Matthews. “In terms of getting a
There are huge fi nancial and environmental benefi ts to ending the distribution of physical media, but reducing power consumption is not one of them. According to a white paper published this year by Cisco, global IP traffi c will increase three-fold over the next fi ve years, resulting in 80 to 90 per cent of global consumer traffi c taken up by VoD, equivalent to six billion DVDs per month. “All we can do in this regard,” says Matthews, “is encourage people to procure 100 per cent green energy. That is another large area of our industry’s footprint that needs to be dealt with as a matter of urgency.
“We do have options with regard to energy. We can procure green energy; we can create a change in the market that way. We also try to push people away from tape and away from physical media toward fi le-based. There is a carbon cost there,
Greenshoot provides crews with reusable water bottles – with handy belt-clips
policy and has developed strategies for Virgin Atlantic, Marks and Spencer, Warner Bros, and several indie productions. Stevens fi nds a wide variety in perspective and sophistication in her clients’ sustainability outlook. “In the main, I’m approached by companies who don’t know where to start, but realise it’s important. I’ve helped companies who want to work with government bodies and know they have to jump through hoops, and companies who are about to go IPO and know that they still have work to do.
Stevens: “I think a lot of companies are waking up to the fact that there are cost savings to be made all over”
but there is an option to procure green energy and go with people who have their servers based in naturally cooler environments.” Tech giants worldwide are already building server farms in the Nordic countries to take advantage of the ambient temperature for server cooling and a glut of cheap hydro, wind
and nuclear-generated electricity in the region. Sweden’s ‘Node Pole’ region boasts 100 per cent renewable power and is home to Facebook’s massive Luleå Data Centre.
Where to start Georgina Stevens’ One Pumpkin consultancy helps companies with sustainability
“For a lot of companies involved in fi lm and television production, sustainable practice isn’t mandatory, but they still think ‘Hang on, this makes sense. I’m sure we can save money here.’ I think a lot of companies are waking up to the fact that there are cost savings to be made all over. It’s a great benefi t when a company can think long-term. For me, it’s how to future-proof your business. But when we have a chief executive in place who only has short-term vision, that’s when it’s a challenge.” Anyone with a grasp of primary school science realises the global threat posed by climate change and environmental degradation, but Stevens notes that attitudes and behaviours are rarely improved by predictions of doom. “It’s no good saying to people, ‘This is all going to end in a disaster’, because people then feel helpless, and when they feel helpless, they do nothing. So, it’s really about empowering people. You try to show them what they can do individually and as part of a business.”
www.bafta.org/about/ sustainability/
www.greenshoot.com www.onepumpkin.co.uk www.cine-regio.org/green-vision
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