Telematics: Data & Consistency for Sustainable Film and TV Production
By Zena Harris, Founder & President, Green Spark Group
In the early days of the film and television industry’s sustainability movement, the focus was on waste—reducing landfill, encouraging recycling, and eventually pushing for composting on set. It was a natural first step. Waste is visible. Tangible. Frustrating to see for many crew.
But as the industry matured and began collecting more data across productions, another pattern became clear: fuel use consistently ranks among the largest contributors to a production’s carbon footprint. From diesel generators to fuel-burning trucks, energy needs behind the scenes are massive, and often invisible.
The good news? We're starting to address it. The not-so-good news? The data we need to prove our progress is often incomplete, inconsistent, or incompatible across vendors.
The Evolution of Clean Tech on Set
As sustainability expectations grow, and clean technology becomes more accessible, the industry is seeing a surge in alternatives to conventional fuel-powered equipment. Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), sometimes called battery generators (though they technically just store energy), are now used to power set lighting, video villages, and mobile production units. Alongside these, we’re seeing hybrid diesel-electric units, solar-powered trailers, hydrogen generators, and more.
This transition marks real momentum. These technologies help reduce local air pollution, noise, and greenhouse gas emissions, especially when paired with clean grid power. But there’s a catch.
Without Data, We’re Just Guessing
Each clean-tech unit added to a production is a win. But if we don’t track how these units are used, and compare them against conventional alternatives, we miss the opportunity to quantify impact and learn from the deployment.
Enter: telematics.
Telematics refers to the real-time (or post-use) data collected from equipment via onboard sensors and monitoring software. For crew and sustainability professionals, telematics can help answer key questions:
Was the unit used efficiently?
How much energy was generated and consumed?
How often did it run? For how long?
Did it effectively replace a diesel or gas generator?
When this information is collected consistently, we can calculate fuel savings, emissions avoided, and return on investment, both financial and environmental.
The Fragmentation Problem
Each equipment vendor has its own data collection and sharing platform. Some can provide data in real time by having users log into a database, while others only share report summaries after the rental period. Some offer detailed logs; others just high-level summaries.
Here’s what’s typically tracked (when it’s tracked at all):
Days in use (with dates)
Hours inverting/outputting power per day
Hours on standby per day
Hours charging per day
Total power output (kWh) per day
Peak load (kW) per day
Total power consumed while charging (kWh)
But not every vendor provides this. This makes comparing performance across equipment, or across productions, difficult. It also slows the data analysis process when wrapping a production.
It would be wonderful if telematics data was in a standardized, consistently available format.
Why It Matters
The point of tracking this data isn’t just to check a sustainability box. It’s to optimize decision-making. When we know how well a battery system performed, how much diesel it displaced, how many emissions it avoided, we can justify its use again. We can help productions plan better, especially the technicians who specialise in power use and planning. We can convince budget holders that clean tech delivers.
Without consistent telematics data, we rely on estimates, assumptions, and manual tracking. There’s room for human error, and that can erode trust in the numbers and limit the ability to report progress credibly back to productions and ultimately to the studios and funders.
A Call to Vendors and Productions
This is a call to action, not just for productions, but for equipment vendors, clean tech providers, and rental companies. We need:
Standardized data formats across equipment types and brands.
Real-time or near-real-time access to performance data.
Clear data dictionaries so crew and sustainability teams know what each metric means.
A straightforward way to access the data, including both detailed and high-level summaries.
This is the evolution of sustainable production: not just using cleaner gear, but proving its effectiveness.
And for productions? Ask for telematics when you rent. Build it into your data workflows and conversations with vendors. Treat it like any other piece of critical production intel, because it is.
At Green Spark Group, we believe that better data leads to better decisions. Let’s make sure the tech that’s helping us cut carbon also helps us tell the full story of how we got there.
