How is the me­dia sec­tor ad­dress­ing the cli­mate chal­lenge?

With more than 450 law­yers in 75 of­fices across the globe our En­ergy and Cli­mate Change prac­tice is one of the largest of its kind. It was foun­ded on ground-break­ing work design­ing and im­ple­ment­ing mod­ern en­ergy mar­kets and is now at the fore­front of de­vel­op­ments on en­ergy trans­ition, re­new­ables and the vari­ous re­sponses to the cli­mate crisis. From ad­vising on cli­mate change strategy, new tech­no­lo­gies, risk and dis­putes, to en­vir­on­ment­al reg­u­la­tion, Power Pur­chase Agree­ments, and real es­tate and in­fra­struc­ture pro­jects, we ad­vise cli­ents op­er­a­tion­ally and stra­tegic­ally. Our track re­cord in­cludes: Ad­vising on the UK’s most ad­vanced car­bon cap­ture pro­ject in the UK’s first zero-car­bon in­dus­tri­al cluster. BP, Eni, Equi­nor, Shell and Total have formed a con­sor­ti­um and as­sumed lead­er­ship of the Net Zero Teesside Pro­ject, pre­vi­ously known as the Clean Gas Pro­ject.Ad­vising product man­u­fac­tur­ers in re­la­tion to sus­tain­ab­il­ity laws for on the launch of new broad­cast and stream­ing devices.Ad­vising broad­cast­ing and me­dia pub­lish­ing com­pan­ies in re­la­tion to Stream­lined En­ergy and Car­bon Re­port­ing and the En­ergy Sav­ings Op­por­tun­ity Scheme.Ad­vising vari­ous private equity funds, banks and large in­ter­na­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing and real es­tate or­gan­isa­tions such as Columbia Thread­needle In­vest­ments, Amet­ek, and John La­ing In­fra­struc­ture Fund on en­ergy ef­fi­ciency, car­bon and re­lated re­port­ing ob­lig­a­tions across the EU.Ad­vising ma­jor banks, in­surers and as­set man­agers on prin­ciples likely to un­der­pin reg­u­lat­ory frame­works in­clud­ing, EU Ac­tion Plan for Fin­an­cing Sus­tain­able Growth, Fin­an­cial Sta­bil­ity Board’s Task Force on Cli­mate-re­lated fin­an­cial dis­clos­ures, LMA Green Loan Prin­ciples, ICMA Green Bond prin­ciples.

For me­dia com­pan­ies, the twin re­spons­ib­il­it­ies of work­ing to­wards net zero and of con­vey­ing the im­port­ance of that mes­sage to their view­ers, read­ers and con­sumers re­quires a care­fully cal­ib­rated ap­proach. In a sec­tor gen­er­ally char­ac­ter­ised by a high level of com­pet­i­tion, the level of co-op­er­a­tion and col­lab­or­a­tion between the ma­jor par­ti­cipants serves as a role mod­el for oth­ers to fol­low.Glob­al suc­cess at COP26 will ul­ti­mately be judged by gov­ern­ments’ col­lect­ive ef­forts to achieve their goals. Sim­il­arly, the me­dia sec­tor may well be judged by its abil­ity to com­mu­nic­ate and per­suade people to change their be­ha­viour. It is a re­spons­ib­il­ity they seem well-equipped to man­age and one that CMS is act­ively en­gaged in help­ing with.

However well the me­dia sec­tor per­forms in work­ing to­wards its zero car­bon tar­gets by re-eval­u­at­ing in­tern­al pro­cesses and cor­por­ate be­ha­viour, its greatest be­ne­fi­cial im­pact ar­gu­ably rests in its ca­pa­city to change so­ci­et­al and con­sumer be­ha­viour. Here, the me­dia sec­tor has an enorm­ous part to play – through por­tray­als on screen, in TV shows, news pro­grammes such as Sky’s The Daily Cli­mate Show and doc­u­ment­ar­ies, as well as in ad­vert­ising. Where broad­casters used to give cli­mate change den­iers equal air­time in dis­cus­sions on the top­ic, this is no longer the case. Some TV pro­grammes, des­pite per­haps hav­ing a re­l­at­ively heavy car­bon foot­print, have served to get im­port­ant mes­sages about cli­mate change across to many mil­lions of people. To film a nature doc­u­ment­ary, the crew has to take their equip­ment to far flung places, of­ten for weeks or months at a time. However, the be­ne­fi­cial im­pact of these pro­grammes can dwarf the car­bon foot­print in­volved in mak­ing them. The net be­ne­fit of some of these pro­duc­tions – Blue Plan­et II be­ing an ob­vi­ous ex­ample – has there­fore been ex­po­nen­tially high­er than the ac­tu­al car­bon foot­print cre­ated be­cause they have edu­cated so many people about the hor­rendous im­pact of cli­mate change on an­im­al and hu­man hab­it­ats. ‘ITV takes is­sues which are on the edge of the main­stream and makes them main­stream,’ says Braun. When it comes to mak­ing cli­mate change main­stream, noth­ing can sur­pass COP26 which is to be hos­ted by the UK in Glas­gow. COP is short­hand for con­fer­ence of the parties un­der the United Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC). This year’s meet­ing, COP26, will of­fi­cially open on 31 Oc­to­ber with more than 120 world lead­ers at­tend­ing as they seek to find ways to re­duce GHG emis­sions and de­liv­er on the am­bi­tions set out in the Par­is Agree­ment and the Con­ven­tion. Un­der the 1992 UN­FC­CC, every coun­try is treaty-bound to “avoid dan­ger­ous cli­mate change”. ‘We talk about our so­cial pur­pose plans at ITV, our abil­ity as a plat­form to re­flect and shape cul­ture,’ says Braun. ‘On the first day of COP26, we’ve got Cli­mate Ac­tion Day on ITV, our main chan­nel. So, from six o’clock in the morn­ing through to 10:30 at night, the en­tire day is go­ing to have a cli­mate ac­tion theme with­in the pro­grammes and the ad­vert­ising breaks.’

When the pan­dem­ic hit BT Sport, they de­cided to ac­cel­er­ate re­mote pro­duc­tion. ‘A foot­ball match, pre-pan­dem­ic, nor­mally in­volved sev­er­al out­side broad­cast vehicles,’ says Garber. ‘For ex­ample, one for the slow-mo­tion re­plays, a second to man­age the present­a­tion and a third to cov­er the match: the dir­ect­or call­ing the cam­er­as. In ad­di­tion to these size­able vehicles, there is a tender, which car­ries all the equip­ment, a din­ing bus, and an­oth­er to man­age on­screen graph­ics. They have to ac­com­mod­ate a very large TV crew. Be­cause of tech­no­logy en­hance­ments, many of these people and their kit can now be some­where else. ‘So, you send your cam­era team, presenters and com­ment­at­ors, but al­most every­body else – re­plays, graph­ics, dir­ect­or, pro­du­cer and as­sist­ant pro­du­cers – can be hun­dreds of miles away in a pro­duc­tion con­trol room. We call them Re­mote Op­er­a­tions Centres (ROCs), like out­side broad­cast trucks, but with no wheels. You have an ROC in a cent­ral loc­a­tion which the crew go to match after match, in­stead of trav­el­ling all over the coun­try. That’s re­mote pro­duc­tion. In ad­di­tion to our Strat­ford stu­dio, we plan to build centres in Birm­ing­ham, Leeds and Glas­gow. So we can still use the people we want, but they have less dis­tance to travel. Crew travel and kit move­ments have been much re­duced: that’s been a very pos­it­ive sus­tain­ab­il­ity by-product of the pan­dem­ic.’In a sign that the trend is spread­ing fur­ther in­to sport, Sky and Tot­ten­ham re­cently partnered for the world’s first ma­jor net zero car­bon foot­ball game against Chelsea. Pub­li­city for the Premi­er League match in­cluded the fol­low­ing: ‘#GameZero will demon­strate the green steps that the sport­ing world can take to work to­wards a zero­car­bon fu­ture; #GameZero part­ners want the game to raise aware­ness of the threat of cli­mate change and in­spire fans to make simple changes that will help re­duce their car­bon foot­print.'

As one of the key reg­u­lat­ors in the me­dia sec­tor, The Ad­vert­ising Stand­ards Au­thor­ity (ASA) has, his­tor­ic­ally, been more re­act­ive than pro­act­ive. But this has changed. ‘The move from re­act­ive to pro­act­ive is a jour­ney we’ve been on since 2014,’ says Guy Park­er, the ASA’s Chief Ex­ec­ut­ive. ‘We’ve made really big strides. Far less of our re­source is now spent deal­ing re­act­ively with com­plaints from the pub­lic.’ Part of that shift in­volves cli­mate change. ‘For the ASA, the fo­cus is: what con­tri­bu­tion should ad­vert­ising reg­u­la­tions make to us hit­ting the cli­mate change tar­gets that we have set ourselves, which have be­come more de­mand­ing with the 78% car­bon re­duc­tion by 2035 tar­get,’ he says. The chal­lenge, notes Park­er, is to identi­fy the pri­or­ity areas that the ASA should look at. ‘Where hu­mans are con­trib­ut­ing to bad en­vir­on­ment­al im­pacts: avi­ation, food, cars and heat­ing are four big areas that have been iden­ti­fied as pri­or­it­ies for be­ha­vi­our­al change in vari­ous re­ports by the Cli­mate Change Com­mit­tee, among oth­ers,’ he says. ‘That gives us a steer on where we should be look­ing.’ Park­er adds: ‘The ASA tries to re­flect so­ci­ety, rather than so­cially en­gin­eer so­ci­ety. This gov­ern­ment and fu­ture gov­ern­ments are go­ing to be leg­ally held to some in­cred­ibly de­mand­ing cli­mate change tar­gets. That makes our life easi­er be­cause the case for change has been made. We then have to de­cide, look­ing at the evid­ence, be­ing thought­ful, tak­ing sound­ings from ex­perts, what that change looks like. There’s a le­git­im­ate ques­tion about wheth­er ad reg­u­la­tion needs to play a part in that change. Busi­nesses want to do the right thing, and pro­mote more sus­tain­able be­ha­viour, not be­cause they’re held to that by a code that we po­lice, but be­cause it fits with their ESG strategy, their com­mit­ments, and their con­tracts with their con­sumers.’ Last Novem­ber, the Ad­vert­ising As­so­ci­ation (AA) launched its Ad Net Zero plan, which aims to get the ad­vert­ising in­dustry to com­mit to min­im­ise its car­bon foot­print in the cre­ation of ads. This year, the ASA and CAP are un­der­tak­ing a Cli­mate Change and the En­vir­on­ment pro­ject, tak­ing stock of the rules reg­u­lat­ing en­vir­on­ment­al claims (some guid­ance hav­ing re­cently been is­sued by the CMA). ‘We’re not just look­ing at green claims, we’re also look­ing at broad­er en­vir­on­ment­al mes­sages, un­sus­tain­able con­sumer be­ha­viours, the ex­tent to which ad­vert­ising is con­trib­ut­ing to that,’ says Park­er. ‘In the next few years, it will be uni­ver­sally ac­cep­ted that ad reg­u­la­tion has a role to play, where it doesn’t at the mo­ment.’ But there is only so much that the ASA can do, even on a more pro­act­ive basis without le­gis­lat­ive change. Stu­art Helmer, head of ad­vert­ising and mar­ket­ing at CMS Lon­don, com­ments: “We have seen reg­u­lat­ors, in­clud­ing the ASA, tak­ing a firmer line against un­sub­stan­ti­ated en­vir­on­ment­al claims in re­cent years. Of­ten this be­ne­fits big brands, who can get wild claims of­ten made by dis­ruptor com­pan­ies taken down. But a re­align­ment of ad­vert­ising reg­u­la­tion to dis­cour­age over­con­sump­tion gen­er­ally would be a sig­ni­fic­ant step bey­ond the ASA’s nor­mal func­tion of cur­tail­ing mis­lead­ing ad­vert­ising, and could have far-reach­ing ef­fects on the in­dustry. While there is only so much that the ASA can do, even on a more pro­act­ive basis, without le­gis­lat­ive change, the CMA’s re­cent pub­lic­a­tion of guid­ance on gre­en­wash­ing may in­dic­ate a firmer line from the ASA’s “back­stop” reg­u­lat­or. Ad­vert­isers should keep a close eye on the out­come of the ASA re­view.”

ITV has form­al­ised its net zero tar­get in an an­nu­al pro­duc­tion plan. ‘We’ve in­stalled an en­vir­on­ment­al data plat­form which provides trans­par­ency on our car­bon emis­sions,’ says Braun. ‘It’s very de­tailed work and quite painstak­ing: we need to look at emis­sions from of­fices based in 13 ter­rit­or­ies around the world which might have mul­tiple sites. In the UK, we have more than 110 sites.’ Garber out­lines BT Sport’s ap­proach. ‘It’s im­port­ant to start from the top down,’ he says. ‘We put our seni­or lead­er­ship team through car­bon lit­er­acy aware­ness train­ing, which has an im­me­di­ate im­pact on how they view their place in the world and how they can help. Train­ing is ex­tremely im­port­ant to get every­body on board. Train the seni­or team, then work down. Al­bert was very help­ful be­cause they provide free train­ing to the me­dia in­dustry. Once that hap­pens, every­body is play­ing for the same team in try­ing to make a dif­fer­ence. Then you do simple things, like giv­ing every­body a flask and a cof­fee cup. ‘Our core busi­ness is sports pro­duc­tion. How do you pro­duce the con­tent? The first thing is to ap­ply everything you do in the stu­dio to when you’re out on the road or mak­ing pro­grammes – at out­side broad­casts, things like ca­ter­ing, single use plastic.’ It’s really im­port­ant to bring your sup­ply chains with you, he notes. ‘The worst thing is to say to your sup­pli­ers: we’re sus­tain­able now, so you’ve got to be. End of con­ver­sa­tion. That’s not the way to do it. In­stead, tell them: we’re a sus­tain­able com­pany now, or cer­tainly try­ing to be, we’d love it if you were too. Let’s see how we can work to­geth­er to get you to a point that we’re all happy with.’ Go­ing green ‘isn’t free’, he notes, ‘it costs someone money some­where.’ This year, Garber re­ceived a press re­lease from Sky Sports about their tar­get to go 100% Green D Plus bio­fuel in out­side broad­cast gen­er­at­ors in a mat­ter of weeks. ‘I sent an email to the head of sus­tain­ab­il­ity at Sky and said: this is amaz­ing, how are you go­ing to do it? She sent me the de­tails of their ac­tion plan. I phoned Tele­gen­ic – our out­side broad­cast sup­pli­er – and said: Can we do what Sky is do­ing? Tele­gen­ic said: yes, we can. Six weeks after their ini­tial press re­lease, we hit the same tar­get as Sky. It’s so im­port­ant that we share know­ledge across the sec­tor even if we’re com­pet­it­ors.’ But, Garber cau­tions: ‘We’ve got to be care­ful not to preach. We re­cog­nise we’re not per­fect and shouldn’t pre­tend that we are. The crime is say­ing noth­ing be­cause you’re too frightened you will be caught out.’ At a prac­tic­al level, both ITV and BT Sport would ideally like their staff and freel­an­cers to use elec­tric vehicles. But un­til the up-front cost drops and the range of EVs in­creases this is not yet feas­ible.

‘Al­bert has helped us,’ says Fer­gus Garber, Dir­ect­or of Pro­duc­tion at BT Sport. ‘The prin­ciple of award­ing a sus­tain­ab­il­ity cer­ti­fic­ate – and be­ing able to at­tach it to the cred­its as a badge of hon­our for your pro­gramme – is very clev­er: it’s what all the broad­casters want. It’s a huge achieve­ment when you get one since it really in­centiv­ises the pro­duc­tion com­pan­ies to be green­er, to achieve that cer­ti­fic­ate.’ Braun adds: ‘Al­bert cer­ti­fic­a­tion is what we man­date all ITV Stu­di­os pro­grammes and all of our com­mis­sioned pro­grammes to go through. The Al­bert sys­tem is smart in its sim­pli­city and prac­tic­al in a very gran­u­lar way. At the be­gin­ning of a pro­duc­tion, you use their car­bon cal­cu­lat­or, es­tim­ate what your car­bon foot­print will be by put­ting in the num­ber of days you’ll be in an edit suite, or the num­ber of flights you might take. If you’re shoot­ing abroad, the ho­tels you’re stay­ing in. That pro­duces your car­bon foot­print. ‘You then need to de­term­ine how it can be re­duced. That might be re­du­cing travel, chan­ging the way that the pro­duc­tion is filmed to give you few­er days, for ex­ample. You sub­mit your new car­bon foot­print, which shows the re­duc­tions you’ve im­ple­men­ted. You then have to off­set through the Al­bert off­set­ting scheme, run by Nat­ur­al Cap­it­al Part­ners, and provide BAF­TA with evid­ence of what you’ve done. ‘In work­ing with our pro­cure­ment team, we’ve taken our top 200 emit­ters: how much we are spend­ing with them and cal­cu­lat­ing what the emis­sions factor will be as a res­ult. We then looked at those 200 sup­pli­ers in more de­tail, ask­ing each of them: Can you tell us about your cli­mate ac­tion plan? Do you have a net zero plan? What are you do­ing to re­duce your car­bon? Are you run­ning on re­new­able en­ergy?’ This can then be factored in­to con­tract ne­go­ti­ations. ‘Bey­ond re­cog­nising car­bon net zero as an ob­ject­ive, me­dia or­gan­isa­tions – along with all com­pan­ies – work­ing with their sup­pli­ers to re­duce their car­bon foot­print need to know what they should put in­to their con­tracts to achieve the de­sired out­comes and mon­it­or pro­gress, as well as know­ing what kinds of con­tracts they might start to see that they haven’t seen be­fore’ says Vic­tor­ia Gaskell, co-head of the me­dia prac­tice at CMS.

So, what are me­dia com­pan­ies do­ing to ad­dress the chal­lenge of meet­ing these tar­gets at a cor­por­ate level? Their re­sponse is cal­ib­rated to ac­com­mod­ate two dis­tinct ele­ments: the activ­it­ies of me­dia com­pan­ies them­selves and those of their sup­pli­ers and freel­an­cers, who com­prise a sig­ni­fic­ant por­tion of work­ers in this sec­tor, par­tic­u­larly in pro­duc­tion and journ­al­ism. A con­cer­ted ef­fort ex­ists among the ma­jor broad­casters to ad­dress both with equal vigour. Earli­er this year, Net­flix pledged to achieve net zero GHG emis­sions by the end of 2022. In com­mon with the BBC, Sky and Chan­nel 4, ITV has a net zero emis­sions tar­get by 2030. ‘It’s been ap­proved by the Sci­ence Based Tar­gets ini­ti­at­ive (SBTi),’ says Susie Braun, Dir­ect­or of So­cial Pur­pose at ITV. ‘We look at our com­pet­it­ors in terms of tar­gets they might set for pro­grammes they’re com­mis­sion­ing to un­der­stand how suc­cess­ful they are, and which audi­ence they reach,’ she says. But on cli­mate change and the me­dia sec­tor’s re­sponse to it, col­lab­or­a­tion is seen as key. ‘On cli­mate ac­tion, the TV sec­tor is in­cred­ibly col­lab­or­at­ive,’ says Braun. ‘We share so many of the same sup­pli­ers: it doesn’t make sense to set dif­fer­ent stand­ards for a small pro­duc­tion com­pany to meet Sky’s stand­ards, but not ITV or BBC stand­ards. We want to make it easy for sup­pli­ers to meet stand­ards that we need them to meet. We work to­geth­er with them to achieve that.’ She adds: ‘All the broad­casters meet un­der the Al­bert aus­pices when it comes to sus­tain­ab­il­ity. We are very happy to share in­form­a­tion and work to­geth­er to achieve our aims.’John En­ser, me­dia part­ner at CMS, ex­plains: ‘For broad­cast­ing, the key or­gan­isa­tion is Al­bert, which does all the cer­ti­fic­a­tion.’ Foun­ded in 2011 and gov­erned by an in­dustry con­sor­ti­um un­der the ae­gis of BAF­TA, Al­bert is a sus­tain­ab­il­ity pro­ject, which acts as the au­thor­ity on en­vir­on­ment­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity for film and TV. Its dir­ect­or­ate mem­bers are BBC, ITV, Chan­nel 4, Sky, Net­flix and BT Sport. Crit­ic­ally, Al­bert provides a sys­tem of car­bon cal­cu­la­tion and sus­tain­ab­il­ity cer­ti­fic­a­tions for me­dia com­pan­ies.

At a gov­ern­ment­al level, na­tion­al gov­ern­ments and the European Com­mis­sion have pro­duced a series of tar­gets. Olivia Jam­is­on, spe­cial­ist en­vir­on­ment part­ner at CMS, out­lines the con­text. ‘For the last 40 odd years, we’ve had vari­ous EU laws fo­cused on waste, emis­sions and en­ergy ef­fi­ciency,’ she says. ‘In the last 10 to 15 years, they have been in­creased lay­er on lay­er. Now we’re at a point where tar­gets are be­com­ing more tan­gible with re­quire­ments front­loaded rather than end of pipe.’In the UK, the Cli­mate Change Act 2008 ori­gin­ally com­mit­ted the UK to an 80% re­duc­tion of green­house gas emis­sions by 2050, com­pared to 1990 levels. In 2019, the Gov­ern­ment amended that Act com­mit­ting the UK to achieve net zero by 2050, rather than the 80% re­duc­tion tar­get. In April this year, the Gov­ern­ment fur­ther heightened its am­bi­tion, an­noun­cing that it “will set the world’s most am­bi­tious cli­mate change tar­get” to re­duce emis­sions by 78% by 2035.Fur­ther reg­u­la­tion is com­ing. ‘In the UK, we have some ex­ist­ing en­vir­on­ment­al re­port­ing re­quire­ments for cer­tain types of busi­nesses in­clud­ing more re­cently stream­lined en­ergy and car­bon re­port­ing, and man­dat­ory cli­mate re­lated re­port­ing for quoted or lar­ger busi­nesses is ex­pec­ted to ap­ply from April 2022,’ says Jam­is­on. ‘Mean­while the EU has launched the European Green Deal – a set of policy ini­ti­at­ives and leg­al pro­pos­als by the European Com­mis­sion. The ori­gin­al com­mit­ment was to reach cli­mate neut­ral­ity across the EU by 2050: an eco­nomy with net-zero green­house gas emis­sion. In both jur­is­dic­tions, there have re­cently been ad­di­tion­al an­nounce­ments for new leg­al tar­gets by 2030.‘The UK now has a tar­get of a 68% re­duc­tion by 2030, and the EU, at least a 55% re­duc­tion by 2030, bring­ing for­ward re­duc­tion tar­gets by 10 to 15 years in each case. This re­quires really trans­form­a­tion­al change, the likes of which we have nev­er seen pre­vi­ously.’ For busi­ness, the trans­form­a­tion will cer­tainly be huge. ‘It will im­pact all sec­tors of busi­ness in everything that they do,’ she says. ‘Al­though the UK is be­ing more am­bi­tious, the EU is set­ting this out in a very dis­tinct frame­work, which means that it is slightly easi­er for busi­nesses to un­der­stand what is ex­pec­ted of them.’ The re­cent pub­lic­a­tion of the UK’s Net Zero Strategy is in­ten­ded to provide more clar­ity on the changes re­quired to meet the UK’s re­duc­tion tar­get. Im­port­antly, in ad­di­tion to those ef­forts, ad­apt­a­tion and mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures will be cru­cial for busi­nesses to factor in­to their activ­it­ies and that of their value chain.