The carbon footprint of one hour's TV production

CLIENT

BBC

PURPOSE

To illustrate the emissions resulting from TV production for an industry conference at White City.

DESCRIPTION

Animation that shows the real-time emissions associated with making one hour of broadcast ready production, and image set.

The television industry is taking steps towards addressing sustainability issues associated with TV productions. A key tool, created by the BBC and made available through a partnership with BAFTA, is Albert - a bespoke carbon calculator.

Carbon Visuals was commissioned by the BBC to produce a set of images and a real-time animation showing the emissions resulting from one hour of TV programming. The data was provided by about 80 productions that were the first to use the Albert calculator at the BBC.

This animation was created for the BBC and shows the real-time emissions associated with making one hour of broadcast ready production - equivalent to about 8.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Average emissions associated with the major stages of a production are here shown in order of size and as a whole, depicted in front of the BBC White City building.

These visuals were first shown at an industry conference, which took place in the iconic BBC White City building that is depicted here, on 3rd November 2011.

The PDF illustrates the emissions of different parts of the production process.

Albert was developed & trialed within the BBC in 2011, with production managers and coordinators providing data on about 80 programmes. While there were considerable variations between productions, the average (mean) rate - about 8.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hour - provides a first attempt at establishing a figure against which programme makers will be able to gauge progress in future.

Annually within the BBC, about 3,800 hours of TV are produced in-house. An annual volume of emissions, based on the average rate per production hour for programme emissions calculated using Albert, is here shown with familiar BBC buildings in Salford and London for scale.

The average (mean) rate of emissions associated with TV production, based on data from about 80 programmes, is about 8.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hour.

This is roughly equivalent to the annual emissions associated with space heating, heating and lighting for a pair of semi-detached houses (figures provided by the BBC).

Based on the average rate per production hour for programme emissions, 11 hours of production time would fill the void in the centre of the BBC Television Centre in London - a space that is well-known to production teams.

8.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the emissions resulting from one hour of TV programming, would fill a cube over 16 metres tall

3,800 hours of TV production would result in this amount of CO2 being released to the atmosphere

8.2 tonnes compared with annual emissions from two average UK houses (8.0 tonnes)

11 hours of production would fill the TV Centre doughnut

Making sense of a BBC programme's carbon footprint

BBC One Planet's annual emissions as a tower of 10-tonne cubes (actual volume of gas).

BBC One Planet's annual emissions as a tower of 10-tonne cubes (actual volume of gas).

BBC One Planet's annual emissions as a pile of 1 tonne cubes of gas.

BBC One Planet's annual carbon footprint as a sphere of carbon dioxide gas.

BBC One Planet's average daily carbon footprint (actual volume).

BBC One Planet's average emissions per second. Visualising rates of emission on very small timescales, as here, allows viewers to see the emissions as dynamic.

The One Planet radio programme on the BBC's World Service came to Carbon Visuals with simple question: "what does our carbon footprint look like?"

One Planet was carefully accounting for emissions arising from the making of the programme and had arrived at a figure of about 34.9 tonnes per year. But what does that mean?

Measuring carbon dioxide in terms of mass (tonnes) makes sense from an accounting point of view but doesn't give us a sense of scale we can relate to. We examined a variety of alternative ways of representing One Planet's footprint.

We have shown the programme's annual emissions by volume in a recognisable location and in relation to an iconic feature - Trafalgar Square and Nelson's Column. These provide a sense of scale that enable the viewer to relate to the volume.

You can hear a discussion about this project, first broadcast on Thursday 8 April 2010, by visiting the One Planet website.