Our Sustainability Progress: Three Years In

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Our Sustainability Progress: Three Years In

Emma Stewart, Ph.D.

Netflix Sustainability Officer

Business

27 June 2024

Global

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Since 2021, we've committed to two near-term climate targets aimed at halving our carbon emissions by 2030 and starting in 2022, matching remaining emissions by investing in natural climate solutions. Three years in, we're on track to meet both.

To keep meeting our targets, we look at where our biggest source of emissions come from - mainly our operations and value chain - and tackle them at the source through a framework we like to call OED : first, we optimize our energy use, then we electrify it and finally decarbonize what's left.

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 operations1, followed by the productions of our films and series, and a small remainder from streaming. Here's a look at our work so far:

Reducing emissions across our offices and studios

We regularly work with our utilities and landlords to identify energy efficiency improvements across our offices and studios, and as in previous years, continue to match our global operations with 100% renewable electricity and adopt renewable fuels.

In 2023, we broke ground on a major expansion project for our studio campus in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where we've made a number of sustainable investments to lower operating costs, improve the production experience, and reduce our carbon footprint. This includes installing geothermal heating and cooling, building on-site solar and battery storage systems, and investing in EV charging infrastructure with fast chargers that quickly power the electric vehicles we seek out for productions.

Netflix Studios Albuquerque includes 300+ feet deep geothermal loops (left) and 150 kW dual dispenser DC fast chargers (right), one of the first of its kind on a studio lot.

Decarbonizing our productions

Fuel consumption remains the biggest source of emissions in our productions, and something we're actively working to reduce by replacing diesel generators with clean mobile power and fossil fuel vehicles with electric or other low emissions vehicles.

In 2023, all of the productions we directly manage incorporated some form of clean mobile power solutions and electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid vehicles. From hydrogen power units on Bridgerton and Back in Action, to batteries on The Decameron and Mother of the Bride, and hybrid generators on The Electric State and Supacell, we're continuing to implement a range of cleantech solutions that reduce fuel use while also limiting air and noise pollution on set.

Bridgerton embraced EVs and clean mobile power solutions during its most recent Season 3 production.

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. 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.

Sharing sustainability on screen

We want to entertain the world and last year, many of our titles included sustainability themes and storylines - from comedies like Unstable, documentaries like You Are What You Eat and Life on Our Planet, and dramas like Leave the World Behind. We showcase these and over 200 others in our Sustainability Stories collection.

In just three years, we've made headway towards our commitments. We'll continue sharing our progress and you can read more about our work in our latest ESG report.

1 We expect production emissions to increase in 2024 as production operations have resumed, which will likely bring them back to be our highest percentage of emissions.

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