Netflix says it is on course to halve its carbon emissions by 2030.
In a blog post, Netflix Sustainability Officer Emma Stewart, PhD said the streamer was also in line to match its remaining emissions by investing in natural climate solutions.
Stewart explained that its biggest source of emissions was its operations and value chain that it looked to tackle at source.
“Last year, we made meaningful progress, reducing our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by half compared to 2022. Due to reduced production work in 2023, most of our emissions came from our corporate operations, followed by the productions of our films and series, and a small remainder from streaming.”
In an expansion project for its our studio campus in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Netflux has installed geothermal heating and cooling, built on-site solar and battery storage systems, and invested in EV charging infrastructure with fast chargers that quickly power the electric vehicles used in productions.
Fuel consumption remains the biggest source of emissions in its productions. Here, diesel generators have been replaced with clean mobile power and fossil fuel vehicles with electric or other low emissions vehicles.
“We’re making progress, but as an industry our biggest challenge to scaling these solutions is availability of supply within our shared ecosystem of production crew and suppliers,” Stewart continued. “To help accelerate this transition, last year we co-founded the Clean Mobile Power Initiative aimed at scaling the supply of clean alternatives that will help the industry move away from its reliance on diesel to power productions.”
Hydrogen power units have been used on Bridgerton and Back in Action, batteries on The Decameron and Mother of the Bride, and hybrid generators on The Electric State and Supacell.
However, it expects production emissions to increase in 2024 following the resumption of production operations after industrial action in the United States, which will likely bring them back to be our highest percentage of emissions.
