BAFTA albert Accelerate 2025 report reveals travel as biggest carbon contributor

BAFTA albert’s Accelerate 2025 report reveals that travel remains the carbon hotspot for the screen industry, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the sector’s emissions and driving total reported carbon output to almost 175,000 tonnes of CO2e in 2024.

Travel and transport is cited as the single highest category, responsible for 65% of the industry’s measured footprint. The report singles out air travel as a major contributor, comprising almost a third of a production’s carbon footprint.

Business and first-class seats, despite making up only 12% of flights, generate almost a third of the total flight emissions due to their greater cabin space per passenger.

The report suggests high-impact immediate action is necessary, noting that simply eliminating one in four flights could deliver significant cuts. Road transport is also lagging, contributing 20% of emissions, with electric vehicles used for only 2% of car journeys.

Energy use is the second-largest emitter at 21% of the footprint, largely driven by non-renewable mains power and the continued use of diesel generators. In 2024, productions burned three million litres of fuel in generators on location.

A series of twelve recommendations outline how production teams can reduce the industry’s carbon emissions and environmental impact by working together to make significant behavioural and purchasing changes. These include:

• Reducing air travel, and switching to economy class where it is unavoidable: reducing flights by a quarter would cut 8% of carbon emissions while simply flying economy class would save 15%
• Speeding up the adoption of electric vehicles for transporting people and kit: swapping a third of car journeys for EVs would take out 5% of carbon emissions
• Switching all mains power to renewables: saving 6% of the overall carbon footprint
• Eliminating fuel from temporary power on set: replacing diesel with HVO in the short term would save 5% of emissions, and sets teams on a path to replacing with battery power in the long term
• A new approach to materials and waste, reducing the use of virgin materials like timber for set-building and sourcing second-hand clothes for costumes, alongside cutting back on the consumption of red meat and food waste
• An upgrade to the collection of data to improve accuracy, particularly when it comes to materials and waste, and to integrate it with existing production accounting processes to enable teams to track sustainability in real time alongside financial budgets, assisted by BAFTA albert’s next-generation calculator which will launch in 2026.

The report is based on voluntary data reported through the BAFTA albert calculator from over 2,500 productions – both film and television.