Albert - born at the BBC and now helping green the TV industry

Given the competitive nature of television, it’s perhaps hard to imagine our biggest broadcasters and independent production companies coming together to work on a project that might just change the entire industry. But for the past year, eleven such organisations have been meeting once a month to do just that – all in the name of saving the planet.

The TV industry is not particularly environmentally friendly; powerful lights, flights to film in far-flung places, on-set diesel generators, big production offices and military-style catering operations to feed a hungry cast and crew all add up to a pretty large carbon footprint. What might surprise you though is that it’s an industry pro-actively trying to do something about it. Cue Albert!

Albert was born here at the BBC; we wanted to reduce our production carbon footprint but immediately came across the first stumbling block - how can you go about reducing something that you can’t even measure? So we developed a tool - called, for no particular reason, Albert - to measure a TV production’s carbon footprint. Following a year of ‘footprinting’ with Albert, we approached BAFTA in 2011 to ask if they would help push the calculator to the wider industry. From that, a consortium came together (comprising broadcasters BBC, BSkyB, Channel 4, ITV, and major independent producers TwoFour, Endemol, Shine, Kudos, All 3 Media, Boundless and IMG).

Each member has put money and time into the project and brought their own experiences of the challenges of trying to make great TV without damaging the planet. It’s a massive task, but we all want to do something about it.

Albert is designed to be as user friendly as possible, asking a maximum of 25 questions about key areas in the production process: production office, studios and stages, overnight accommodation, travel, location work, post production and now, waste and materials.

But crucially, Albert works by placing sustainability right in the hands of production teams. They own the information entered into Albert, and they also decide (with help available from the sustainable production team) the best ways to reduce the production’s final footprint.

The BAFTA-led consortium recently released its first number – 5.8 tonnes - on how much carbon the TV industry as a whole is producing per production hour. This is based on 266 completed Albert footprints, and is roughly the total emissions you would expect from one UK citizen every year. It’s also enough carbon dioxide to fill more than 40 double decker buses!

Of course Albert isn’t a magic wand that will cut the carbon for you. Footprinting a programme is only the first step towards more sustainable production. It’s what we do with that data that counts. And many programme makers are now beginning to take practical steps to reduce their footprints.

With more than 700 footprints in progress from across the industry, the Albert Consortium has made a great start, but we know there’s a very long way to go if we want to have a meaningful and positive impact on the environment. Our aims are simple but powerful; we want to see every production company in the UK (and then beyond) actively signing up and using Albert.

And long-term, we want to work with the industry to help production teams adopt new programme-making methods that will positively impact on the environment, without negatively impacting on the creativity for which our TV industry is acclaimed.

*BBC Outreach is responsible for reporting on every aspect of the BBC’s corporate responsibility activity. This includes our Sustainability strategy, which drives our ambition to use our resources wisely and minimise our impact on the environment and society.

Adapted from a blog originally written for The Independent and published on 23 October 2012