European animation is about to get their own environmental report card. A new European certification program, called ANiMPACT, has begun testing a system that will let animation studios prove they’re producing their work in an environmentally responsible way, something the live-action film industry has been able to do for years. ANiMPACT is run jointly by three organizations: CineRegio, a network of 53 regional film funds across Europe; Ecoprod, a French nonprofit that has worked on sustainable filmmaking since 2009; and Green Film, a certification system for live-action productions that launched in Italy’s Trentino region in 2017 and has since certified more than 340 films and shows in about a dozen countries. The pilot program officially launched on June 25 at the international animation film festival in Annecy. It follows two years of work and a public feedback period that drew responses from more than 100 organizations in 18 countries. blogherads.adq.push(function () { blogherads .defineSlot( 'medrec', 'gpt-article-mid-article-uid0' ) .setTargeting( 'pos', ["mid-article1","mid-articleX","mid","mid-article"] ) .setTargeting( 'viewable', 'yes' ) .setSubAdUnitPath("ros\/mid-article") .addSize([[300,250],[2,2],[300,251],[620,350],[2,4],[4,2],[320,480],[620,366]]) .setClsOptimization("minsize") ; }); Related Stories TV Netflix Unveils 'Queenstown,' Its First New Zealand Series Movies The End of an Era: Inside 'Heartstopper Forever' and the Show That Changed British YA The idea fills a gap that has existed for as long as environmental certification has been around. Live-action films have had programs like Green Film, the U.K.’s Albert and Ecoprod’s Carbon Clap calculator to measure and certify how eco-friendly a production is. Nothing like that has existed for animation, even though it’s a major part of the film and TV business and, despite appearances, comes with its own environmental cost. “Animation was kind of left behind from every talk, every discussion, every tool,” said Luca Ferrario, who runs the Trentino Film Commission and helped build both Green Film and ANiMPACT. “But at the same time, it’s a significant part of the film industry. Animation producers were complaining because they were also cut out from the incentives linked to sustainable filming, because they have no way to prove a more sustainable behavior.” blogherads.adq.push(function () { blogherads .defineSlot( 'medrec', 'gpt-dsk-tab-mid-article2-uid1' ) .setTargeting( 'pos', ["mid","mid-article2","mid-articleX"] ) .setTargeting( 'viewable', 'yes' ) .setSubAdUnitPath("ros\/mid-article2") .addSize([[300,250],[300,251],[620,350],[2,4],[4,2],[320,480],[620,366]]) .setClsOptimization("minsize") ; }); That complaint is what got the project started in 2024, when Ferrario’s team and Ecoprod realized they were each independently trying to solve the same problem. Rather than build separate, competing systems — which is roughly what happened when environmental certification for live-action film first developed differently in Italy, France and Germany — the groups decided to design one shared European standard from the start, working together with CineRegio. “With live action, we started in this way, and France started in that way, and then Germany did their thing, so now it’s a mess,” says Ferrario. “With animation we wanted be on the same page from the beginning.” Figuring out how to measure animation’s environmental impact turned out to be harder than doing the same for live action, mostly because almost no one had tried before. The only existing tool anywhere that covered animation was a French calculator, now called Carbulator, built by the industry group Anim’France. The environmental impact of animation is also harder to measure because a single project is often split across many different studios, countries and outside vendors, rather than handled by one production crew in one place. “What is complicated about animation is that it is often fragmented across different players, different companies, different countries,” Ferrario said. “This is what makes it more complicated to manage.” blogherads.adq.push(function () { blogherads .defineSlot( 'medrec', 'gpt-thr-article-mid-articleX-uid2' ) .setTargeting( 'pos', ["btf","mid-articleX","mid"] ) .setTargeting( 'viewable', 'yes' ) .setSubAdUnitPath("ros\/mid-articleX") .addSize([[300,250],[300,251],[620,350],[320,480],[620,366]]) .setLazyLoadMultiplier(2) .setClsOptimization("minsize") ; }); A single animation feature also takes much longer, usually many years, to complete, making it harder to measure total environmental impact.