5 June 2026
Temporary power represents one of the most significant Scope 1 emission sources within the operational control of film and TV productions. Generators are relied upon to power unit bases, lighting, studio and broadcast infrastructure, supporting the short-term, mobile nature of production cycles.
As broadcasters and streamers align with SBTi-validated decarbonisation pathways and clean power ambitions, credible Scope 1 reductions require structured planning, role clarity and energy performance measurement.
Effective application of the ISEP Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Management Hierarchy: Eliminate ➔ Reduce ➔ Substitute ➔ Remove depends first on energy visibility. Understanding actual demand, runtime behaviour and fuel intensity before intervention decisions are made, particularly in short-term mobile power contexts where complex logistics and compressed timelines mean decisions are frequently made ahead of robust energy demand analysis.
In many cases, the barrier to applying the hierarchy is not a lack of technology, but the absence of operational systems that allow energy demand, cost and carbon performance to be considered early enough in production decision-making.
The UK film and TV sector’s SPARK: Clean Temporary Power by 2030 roadmap signals increasing recognition of temporary power as a material Scope 1 source. However, translating sector-level ambition into consistent on-the-ground performance requires alignment across broadcasters, suppliers and production teams. Without shared minimum datasets and comparable Energy Performance Indicators, implementation risks being inconsistent and difficult to scale.
Without consistent visibility of energy demand and generator performance, productions cannot meaningfully prioritise elimination, reduction or substitution within the hierarchy.
The following illustration draws on measured data and insights from over 40 UK productions, including a three-year hybrid-battery transition on the BBC drama Silent Witness to demonstrate how the hierarchy can be operationalised in practice, highlighting the conditions required for measurable outcomes at scale.
In temporary power systems, elimination refers specifically to avoiding the deployment of combustion-based generators altogether. It is typically the most structurally constrained stage of the hierarchy, as it requires early alignment between policy, creative intent, infrastructure feasibility and commissioning-stage budget and resilience decisions – often before detailed technical specifications are fully defined.
Production energy demand varies significantly across departments, and the sector does not operate with a standardised methodology for forecasting, managing or reporting temporary power efficiency.
Under compressed timelines and competing delivery pressures, with no common energy efficiency visibility, temporary power decisions frequently revert to established norms as a risk-mitigation response. In such environments, familiar over-specification becomes the default, limiting opportunities to remove combustion generation before reduction or substitution is considered.
Analysis of temporary power energy and fuel data from 40 UK productions indicates that full or partial elimination of diesel generator use, through direct grid connection or mobile uninterrupted power supply (UPS) systems, is often technically feasible.
However, replication depends on early-stage forecasting, embedded power planning expertise, understanding available grid redundancy and agreed approaches to managing perceived transmission risk. In some cases, relatively modest enabling works can unlock significant generator fuel avoidance; on one production, adapting an existing mains power distribution point for under one thousand pounds enabled tens of thousands of litres of fuel avoidance and significant cost and emission reduction.
At the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest, live technical transmission and the broadcast compound were powered via a mobile UPS drawing on grid electricity, with HVO-fuelled generators retained solely as contingency, avoiding several thousands of litres of generator fuel.
A similar approach was later adopted on Strictly Come Dancing, demonstrating that Scope 1 generator use can be eliminated in transmission-critical environments when demand is forecast and grid resilience is assessed in advance and prioritised.
These solutions often require specialist technical expertise not typically embedded within production teams and involve higher upfront equipment costs. While total power system fuel savings can be substantial, the absence of quantified energy efficiency modelling and aligned budgeting mechanisms frequently undermine the business case. In shorter-duration or genuinely low-demand productions, clean power strategies may also carry higher net costs, reinforcing the importance of accurate demand forecasting and context-specific feasibility assessment and commissioning-stage alignment on risk, redundancy and budget allocation.
The most consistent opportunities emerged within the Reduce stage. Across the measured dataset, generator capacities commonly ranged from 80 kVA to 500 kVA, with average load factors frequently operating at approximately 20% or less of rated capacity, indicating systemic over-specification.
This pattern reflects the fast turnaround, short term project-based nature of the film and TV sector, where responsibility for energy decisions is distributed and formalised governance structures are limited. In the absence of shared efficiency metrics or routine monitoring, power systems are typically specified against worst-case or familiar scenarios, with limited scrutiny of average operating performance.
In contrast, across the measured dataset of 40 productions where energy monitoring and power management were deliberately embedded within production planning, generator telemetry captured kWh, load factor and runtime patterns, enabling redundant night-time and weekend loads to be identified and reduced. This, combined with fuel consumption data informed the establishment of Energy Performance Indicators (EnPIs), created comparable visibility of efficiency across departments and between productions of different scales.
Together, these mechanisms enabled active optimisation of temporary power, delivering evidenced fuel reductions of 30-60% on selected productions, alongside reduced generator idle runtime, lower Scope 1 emissions and reduced exhaust related air pollution.
Where feasible, generators were downsized to align with measured demand. However, resizing was often constrained by supplier fleet composition. Many providers maintain assets in standardised kVA bands rather than demand-specific sizes. Long asset investment cycles, combined with short-term hire models, continue to limit resizing flexibility across the sector. Where downsizing was not possible but measured demand was intermittently low – small, supplementary battery systems were deployed to carry baseload demand, enabling primary generators to remain off during low-load intervals and thereby reducing idle runtime and improving load factor.
For example, on selected productions, 7-10 kW battery packs were deployed in addition to the standard power package to power camera battery charging, overnight catering units and on-set utilities, enabling 100-200 kVA generators to remain switched off during non-peak periods but still be available for high demand scenarios. Where consistently implemented, this approach delivered fuel savings of approximately 20% on some productions.
In some static production environments, generator synchronisation and staged loading dynamically matched output to demand, improving efficiency while retaining peak-capacity resilience. However, adoption can be constrained where additional hire costs are evaluated separately from projected, and often uncertain, fuel savings, limiting perceived short-term viability.
Once load profiles were understood and operational efficiencies improved, substitution became viable.
On Silent Witness, a three-year transition replaced conventional unit-base generation with a hybrid generator-battery system. Right-sizing the system, using battery storage for baseload demand and improving generator control reduced combustion runtime by more than half, while improving load factors and lowering noise and local emissions.
Hybridisation of the unit base, which often relocates daily, initially began with a static ten-day shoot to test system integration before batteries were mounted onto an existing production unit towing truck, eliminating additional logistics costs. This configuration subsequently became standard practice across multiple suppliers, with batteries integrated directly into mobile unit-base systems. However, battery selection and control integration proved critical to achieving maximum efficiency.
Monitoring energy use on lighting trucks proved more challenging than at the unit base because the generator was often integrated within the vehicle body, making retrofitting telematics difficult. Manual data collection was therefore used to understand generator loading patterns and identify opportunities to improve efficiency. In collaboration with the supplier, these findings informed the design and manufacture of a new hybrid lighting generator carrier vehicle, designed to substantially reduce fuel use and improve operational efficiency compared with the previous configuration. The innovation required capital investment and operational commitment from both supplier and production but has since shown potential to deliver replicable efficiency benefits and influence wider fleet design across the sector.
A comparable hybrid approach was adopted at the Chelsea Flower Show, where hybrid-battery power provision reduced HVO consumption by almost a quarter against the previous series. However, overall power system costs increased due to additional hybrid infrastructure and integration requirements across a shorter-term production cycle with less opportunity for fuel savings, underscoring the importance of lifecycle and portfolio-level evaluation when assessing substitution strategies and budget commitment.
Substitution proved most effective when informed by measured demand, embedded monitoring and total system cost analysis. Economic viability was strongest on larger or returning productions, where longer runtimes and higher energy volumes improved generator fuel savings and offset additional hire or integration costs.
Despite these successes, integration and efficiency challenges persist. The industry does not yet operate a structured continuous improvement mechanism to standardise learning and performance across productions and suppliers. As a result, avoidable inefficiencies, integration errors and misaligned incentives are often repeated.
A further consideration relates to performance framing. Once conventional diesel has been substituted with HVO, the reported carbon intensity per litre is significantly lower. Further reductions in fuel volume, for example through hybridisation, can therefore appear to deliver relatively modest additional CO₂ savings on paper compared with the larger reduction already achieved through fuel switching.
This can weaken the perceived business case for efficiency investment, even where it reduces absolute fuel demand, improves system performance and lowers operational risk.
However, HVO is a transitional fuel, not a replacement for energy efficiency. Its benefit depends on robust certification, traceability and evidence of sustainable sourcing. Without this, reported carbon reductions may be overstated or unsupported, and the wider environmental impacts of the fuel may be unclear. Fuel switching should therefore be treated as one part of the hierarchy, not a reason to stop reducing fuel use through better planning, grid feasibility, sizing, hybridisation and operational control.
Long-term decarbonisation and system resilience require sustained reductions in absolute generator fuel use, not solely improvements in emissions intensity. Without continued focus on fuel reduction, the sector risks structural dependence on HVO and continued exposure to price volatility and supply constraints as demand increases across multiple industries. This reinforces the need to track energy efficiency alongside emissions intensity.
The "Remove" stage was not used within the 40 case study productions. Resources were instead focused on reducing emissions at source through energy monitoring, power optimisation and hybrid system deployment. In temporary infrastructure environments, these measures typically deliver clearer operational and environmental value than relying on carbon removals or offsets after the event.
Across productions applying structured hierarchy sequencing to temporary power management:
• ~60% reduction in generator fuel use
• Improved load efficiency and reduced runtime
• Cleaner air and quieter sets
• Supplier innovation informed by measured demand.
These outcomes demonstrate that the ISEP hierarchy can be operationalised effectively within short-term, mobile infrastructure environments when underpinned by reliable performance data, structured forecasting and aligned delivery roles.
Applying the hierarchy in temporary production environments highlights several structural delivery constraints:
• Decision ownership for power specification is distributed
• No consistent minimum dataset exists for temporary power efficiency
• Performance benchmarks remain non-standardised
• Upfront kit hire is visible and certain; fuel savings are projected and contingent. They can operate on different budgets, so the case rarely gets mad
• Supplier asset investment cycles differ from short-term production contracts
• No clear industry data-sharing agreement exists to support consistent access to aggregation of or learning from energy efficiency data.
Commissioning broadcasters may hold science-based targets, yet asset ownership, investment decisions and operational delivery sit in different parts of the value chain. This fragmentation weakens the commercial signal for investment in efficiency-enhancing assets and planning capability.
Modelling indicates that scaling efficiency improvements across a portfolio of productions could yield material industry-level savings. However, grid infrastructure is capital-intensive and typically owned by venues and landowners who do not capture production fuel savings and are not deliverable within production timelines. Whereas more affordable mains adaptation is rarely requested, given the lack of information on energy demand and grid capacity, and responsibilities remain unclear.
Similarly, suppliers investing in hybrid assets do not directly retain the operational savings achieved on individual projects. Specialist planning capability and continuous improvement must also be developed beyond short-term production cycles.
While efficiency gains are viable at system scale, they can appear commercially marginal when assessed within isolated production budgets.
These conditions do not prevent hierarchy application but limit its consistency at scale. In temporary power systems, delivery failure rarely reflects lack of intent; more often it arises from fragmented accountability, limited forecasting maturity and inconsistent data standards embedded within the production ecosystem. Without structured delivery frameworks, the hierarchy stays lodged in best-practice discourse rather than becoming operational.
D-Carbon Alliance has begun to bridge this gap by convening those with the commercial risk of delivery to align around practical foundations. By bringing together a pre-competitive power supplier working group supported by The British Film Institute, we've developed early alignment around three core areas: (1) Energy visibility, (2) commercial clarity, and (3) ownership and delivery. The group has defined a minimum common energy dataset and recommended Energy Performance Indicators for temporary power in line with ISO 50001. This establishes the foundations for consistent measurement, improved forecasting and the potential to benchmark energy efficiency across productions over time.
This approach is now being piloted with a prime-time returning BBC Entertainment series and with support of Creative Scotland and Culture for Climate Scotland. The pilot will use the framework to make the clean power progress already achieved across the show easier to evidence, understand and compare. It will also identify opportunities for future series and test how energy efficiency reporting can support better decisions and shared learning.
Achieving clean temporary power across the TV and film sector by 2030 will depend not only on adopting new technologies, but on establishing the common reporting structures, data-sharing agreements, continuous improvement mechanisms and commercial signals that allow those technologies to succeed in real production environments. Energy performance must become visible, comparable and actively managed – not simply assumed.
Having tested the industry's carbon calculator while working on Eastenders back in 2008, Suzanne has been driving sustainability from the ground up every since. More recently leading strategic decarbonisation across BBC Studios slate of 200+ productions annually and supporting industry transition as co-chair of the albert production sustainability task force.
The ISEP Greenhouse Gas Management Hierarchy (GHG Hierarchy) is a structured framework designed to guide organisations in systematically reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.
Recognised as the global best-practice approach for tackling the emissions that cause climate change by the The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the GHG Hierarchy has always been an open-source resource.
First created in 2009 by the Institute of Sustainability and Environmental Professionals (ISEP) – when known as IEMA – it has since been through several updates to align with evolving mitigation and net-zero targets.
The latest update was published in 2026.
