Making kids shows can be a dirty business—if not in terms of negotiating deals and revenue splits, then certainly in terms of the carbon emissions involved in producing and selling a series.

Globally, the entertainment industry is estimated to generate millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, according to the Producers Guild of America. (In 2019, the global production of feature films alone emitted 4.2 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, says global analytics firm Omdia.)

To counteract the harm the industry is doing to the planet and its inhabitants, European broadcasters and studios are leading an industry-wide push to reduce carbon emissions (the greenhouse gases that are driving climate change). The goal is to make systemic changes designed to get to net-zero status, with minimal reliance on offset programs—but a phased approach is going to be necessary to achieve net zero.

Government mandates and new requirements from major broadcasters and funding bodies are galvanizing these changes. As a result, there’s increasing pressure for producers to calculate and reduce their carbon impact. And with more and more broadcasters requiring productions to reduce their carbon footprint, planning ahead is the key to not getting left behind.

The UK leads the way

The industry has been making noise about greening up its act for several years now, but talk isn’t enough anymore, says Órlaith Rogers, a junior communications manager at albert, the BAFTA-owned carbon calculator and production certification tool that has been adopted by the UK industry and is increasingly catching on with networks and studios around the world.

All major British broadcasters now require producers to get an albert certification before their projects can be commissioned or renewed. This means that each company must report data quantifying its carbon footprint, develop a plan to reduce emissions, and provide evidence of actions taken towards this end.

“We entertain and inform millions of people in the UK, and it’s incumbent upon us to expand our own efforts to manage our environmental footprint,” says Louise Bucknole, GM of kids and family at Paramount UK & Ireland. “We measure our production footprints using the albert carbon tool and mandate that all of our productions seek certification.”

Many prodcos are already using albert. Last year, 3,000-plus productions did a carbon footprint calculation (11% more than in 2022), and nearly all of them got certified, says Rogers. Certification requires productions to complete a Carbon Action Plan during the pre-production stage to map out how the company intends to reduce its carbon emissions as much as possible through to the end of post-production. This can include measures like switching to low-energy lighting during location shoots, using reusable batteries and recycling set dressings at the end of production.

While all of that may seem daunting—especially to producers who haven’t had to take those steps before—Paramount UK and distributor Serious Kids offer up a model for others to follow with their new live-action series Treehouse (30 x seven minutes), which is in production at London-based RD Studios and set to premiere in Paramount’s Milkshake! preschool block this spring.

Treehouse is sustainably produced at London’s RD Studios using solar power and recyclable sets.

The team behind Treehouse focuses on production sustainability in several different ways. For example, RD Studios is powered by solar panels, and the show’s sets are built from recyclable cardboard so they can be pulped and repurposed when they’re no longer needed, rather than thrown into a landfill. This approach is also more economically sound—pulping worn-down or no-longer-needed set furnishings could potentially save producers thousands of dollars in storage costs.

It’s becoming more and more critical for studios to be able to account for the carbon emissions of their productions because this information is increasingly important to broadcasters and streamers worried about their own carbon footprints. Netfix has pledged to cut its emissions roughly in half by 2030, for example, and Paramount UK has set 46% as its reduction goal for the same timeframe. This will include a mix of Scope 1 emissions (which the company generates directly through its own actions, such as operating fleets of non-electric vehicles) and Scope 2 emissions (which are indirectly generated from processes like buying electricity or energy from utility companies that burn hydrocarbons for fuel).

But then there are Scope 3 emissions that need to be accounted for, and these ones are generated by the production of content that a broadcaster has licensed from a third-party supplier. And for its part, Paramount UK has also pledged to reduce these emissions by 2030. As a major operator, Paramount UK sees the need to set an example in the industry, so it’s trying its best to greenlight productions with sustainable themes; work towards decarbonization domestically; and ensure its productions adopt best practices to reduce emissions, says Bucknole. “We were delighted that the team behind Treehouse had worked so hard in these areas as we are very keen to ensure all our productions are as sustainable as possible, and this was a big tick from us at Paramount.”

Canada joins the movement

Across the pond, Canada has started collecting and reporting carbon emissions data more recently.

The CBC kicked things off in 2022, and children’s programming had the third-highest carbon emissions of all of the public broadcaster’s productions (an average of almost 25 CO2eq metric tons per hour), behind only by drama (75 CO2eq metric tons per hour) and comedy (just over 50 CO2eq metric tons per hour). Carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2eq, is the measurement used to calculate all greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane and CO2.

The CBC hasn’t tied commissions to net-zero emissions yet, but it does require producers to use the albert calculator, provide a carbon footprint production report, and fill out a checklist during development that asks questions like, “Do you and your writers use renewable energy and eco-friendly travel options?”

Its team has found that travel, transportation and filming spaces (both studios and shooting locations) are among the biggest contributors to higher emissions, so the pubcaster recommends that producers use low- or carbon-free options for travel, and leverage tools like virtual production.

For Toronto-based Dark Slope Studios, which operates filming facilities and soundstages, the future of reducing carbon emissions is its 75-foot LED volume wall. It features panels that can show 3D footage behind actors, and according to a November 2023 report from Northern Ireland’s Ulster University, this type of virtual production is capable of reducing carbon emissions by 20% to 50% compared to traditional filming methods like location shoots.

Then there’s the big question of cost. Sustainability proponents often use the term Green Premium, which refers to the extra cost of choosing a clean production option compared to a more business-as-usual approach. In many ways, it might seem like going green and saving money are mutually exclusive. But data from Earth Angel Canada and a 2023 report from the Canadian Media Producers Association (Towards a Green Budget Framework in Canada) indicate there are net-positive cost savings of roughly US$18,000 at stake for producers who opt for green transport and generator options on a live-action feature film production budgeted at US$7.1 million.

The key for producers is to look at more than just one line in their spreadsheets to determine whether going green is saving them money, says Marsha Newbery, VP of sustainability and business a airs at Vancouver-based Thunderbird Entertainment. For example, it may be more expensive to rent electric vehicles, but they don’t need to be fuelled up with gas, and they produce less carbon.

Newbery says a show’s sustainability efforts should start on the page. She works with development and production teams at Thunderbird and Atomic Cartoons to train writers on best practices such as planning fewer night scenes to reduce the cost and emissions involved in transporting and powering stage lights.

That’s a solution for live-action shows, but it’s more difficult to make the production process greener in animation. Newbery says this is partly because there’s no consensus yet in the sector on best practices for bringing emissions down, and generally less attention is paid to this problem in animation than in live action.

But that’s beginning to change. People working in the animation industry tend to be younger than their film counterparts, and they’re starting to push their employers to make more efforts to reduce emissions, says Newbery. “We have to decarbonize as an industry. There’s storytelling potential in this as well because there’s growing [buyer] interest in how we put climate action on screen.”

And it’s not just Thunderbird that’s thinking along these lines—in September, the CBC-led coalition Green Frame was formed, bringing 11 government-supported organizations and funds together to reduce the environmental impact of film and TV production in Canada. The group aims to encourage sustainability at every stage of a production’s life cycle—from commission through distribution—and to reach a consensus on how the industry calculates and reduces its emissions.

Data from the Sustainable Production Alliance’s Carbon Emissions of Film and Television Production report (2021)

France’s new requirements

As of March 1, 2025, all animated content and video game productions in France seeking funding from the National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image (CNC) will need to provide provisional and final assessments of their carbon footprint when submitting requests for development or production funding. Called the “eco-conditionality measure,” this requirement has been in place for live-action series and films since January 2024. Additionally, European broadcasters have to abide by the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive for reporting their own sustainability efforts, which is putting pressure on their content suppliers to do the same.

To pave the way for adopting these new processes, AnimFrance has worked with MIAM! Animation (Edmond and Lucy, The Tinies) and other studios including Superprod, Illumination and TeamTO to develop a carbon calculator called Carbulator. This tool can be used to quantify a production’s carbon footprint within two hours, and it should be available to the industry later this year, says MIAM! CEO Hanna Mouchez.

Producers input their total emissions data into Carbulator and then allocate the results to different parts of the production, including hardware (servers), setup and teams, says Mouchez. This differs from existing calculators that are made for live-action projects and only calculate emissions related to filming.

The next step is getting this tool into the hands of producers outside of France in order to achieve more industry-wide uniformity in calculation methodology and to facilitate data-sharing. Using Carbulator to track emissions in real time for its CG-animated series The Tinies, MIAM! found that meals generated the most carbon (35% of its total emissions in 2023), followed by project hardware and software, commuting, office energy and business trips.

Another prodco that has embraced Carbulator is La Cabane/Thuristar, which used the tool to calculate its footprint on season two of CG-animated series Mush-Mush and the Mushables. Switching to Unreal Engine for the show’s second season decreased rendering times by 95%, in turn requiring fewer render farms and less electricity and air conditioning, says La Cabane/Thuristar’s founder Perrine Gauthier.

“Information and awareness are key to reducing our industry’s carbon footprint. Teams and company owners need to be trained to better understand energy consumption [and] reduce waste production.”

Thunderbird takes a bite out of emissions 

Reginald the Vampire reduced its carbon footprint by 62% between seasons one and two.

Scripted production is one of the largest generators of emissions in media, and Thunderbird Entertainment staffers were eager to reduce the footprint of Reginald the Vampire as it went into production on season two. Great Pacific Media’s live-action vampire horror-comedy for the teen and YA set (which was canceled by Syfy after its first two seasons) didn’t have any additional money in its budget for sustainability, says Marsha Newbery, Thunderbird’s VP of sustainabiity and business affairs.

So the production team had to think about building it into the way the season was shot. Production guidelines specified that shooting locations had to be within a 10 minute drive of the central hub known as “the circus” (where all the trailers are), which didn’t move all season. This saved on labor expenses and fuel consumption, and when the sets were farther away (about 5% of the time), there were on-set green rooms for wardrobe, hair and makeup so the cast didn’t need to drive back and forth.

These strategies yielded some impressive results. Reginald’s 10 x 60-minute second season achieved a 62% reduction in carbon emissions (mainly due to reduced gasoline usage, which also saved the company around US$90,000) and a 67% drop in diesel consumption. Season two’s fuel footprint was 176.76 metric tons of CO2eq, compared to 467.77 metric tons in season one. A shorter shooting schedule and being able to reuse sets and costumes from season one also drove reductions in emissions from catering, flights, materials and building energy use.

“Climate change isn’t a future crisis—it’s a current crisis,” says Newbery. “And it’s important for companies to identify the things they’re doing right and share these examples with other producers and creative teams to show what’s possible.”

This story originally appeared in Kidscreen‘s Q1 2025 magazine issue.