Most of the time, big budget productions are filmed in several locations around the world. About 51% of the carbon dioxide emissions of film productions are usually related to traffic, of which the share of air traffic is about 30% and the share of road traffic is about 70%.

Reducing travel has understandably played a key role in reducing emissions from film production, but it does not completely solve the emission problem of film productions, rendering and post-production produce their own share of emissions.

According to BAFTA’s February 2016 report, the average animation production produced around 5.5 tonnes of CO2 emissions per hour. Most of the emissions are caused by the production office and post-production.

However, it should be noted that a 3D animated film from a major studio like Pixar, for example, leaves a comparatively larger carbon footprint than a television animation from any independent studio.

Virtual production, for example with the help of animation, reduces the emissions caused by traveling by removing the need to travel to several locations to film. Production companies offering animation services often present themselves as a cheaper and environmentally friendly alternative. However, the use of servers, which are necessary for animations, is unfortunately still far from carbon neutrality, and its solution is not transparent.

Consuming processes

If we assume that a 90-minute animated film has a total of 130,000 frames, each of which takes 3 hours to render with 270W equipment, the rendering of the film consumes approximately 100,000kWh of electricity in total. In practice, electricity consumption is often even more than the calculated estimate indicates.

Based on the example above, it can still be roughly estimated that the waste heat obtained from making a 90-minute animated film could provide hot water for up to 20,000 homes for a day.

Wired magazine reported in 2010 that Toy Story 3, for example, took an average of 7 hours to render per frame, while some frames in that film took more than 30 hours to render. On the other hand, the rendering of the most complex single frame in Toy Story 4 took more than 1200 hours.

If a 90-minute film consists of 130,000 individual frames, in an animated TV series that may have several seasons, the number of frames rises to several million. This is a huge amount of heat leaving data centers, if the heat generated from rendering is not collected.