France Télévisions carbon plan targets a 19 percent cut by 2031

The France Télévisions carbon plan sets a new target: 19 percent less carbon dioxide between 2025 and 2031. The French public broadcaster measured 532,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2025. It had already cut 11 percent between 2021 and 2025. Together that makes a 28 percent reduction across the decade.

Sending programmes to viewers makes 62 percent of the total

Most of the emissions happen outside the broadcaster. About 62 percent comes from delivering and watching content. That covers set-top boxes, digital terrestrial television and the screens people use at home. Core operations account for 172,258 tonnes, roughly a third of the footprint. Programme acquisition alone accounts for 73,696 tonnes, and fiction makes up almost half of that.

Ecoprod rules now cover every France TV Studio drama

The plan extends Ecoprod certification to all fiction made by France TV Studio. Games and entertainment shows come next. Ecoprod is the French audiovisual body that writes low-carbon production standards, and France Télévisions helped found it. The broadcaster also tightened its travel rule. Staff may not fly to a city they can reach by train in under five hours. The old limit was three and a half hours.

Livia Saurin counted the emissions before setting the target

The plan draws on 70 measures from the group’s Convention for Climate and Environment. Livia Saurin, deputy secretary general, said the group needed an accurate picture of its own emissions before it could act. France Télévisions says the path matches the Paris Agreement.

Advertisers cannot repeat a broadcaster figure without proof

European media owners publish numbers like these because buyers ask for them. The rules changed this month: the EU ban on vague green claims means an advertiser has to back any figure it borrows. Money, not carbon, drives most schedule cuts right now, and WDR is dropping 76 programmes by the end of 2027. Meanwhile ZDF keeps adding streaming channels, and streaming sits in the part of the chain that carries most of the emissions.

Anyone buying French television can open the broadcaster’s figures and check one line: the 62 percent that sits in delivery. A plan that shifts weight between digital terrestrial television and streaming moves that line. So it belongs in the media plan, not in a sustainability appendix at the back.