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Calculation in practice

‘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.

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The media and climate change
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Victoria Gaskell
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