Greening culture: Are we on track?

From travel to adaptation and energy to influencing, Greening culture: Are we on track? summarises the results of the 2022/23 environmental reporting for Scotland’s arts and culture sector.
Since 2014/15, Creative Carbon Scotland has supported environmental reporting for cultural organisations across Scotland. The ensuing years have seen much change, not only to the urgency of the climate emergency and to the measures needed to combat its negative impacts, but to the quantity and types of data that are reported and to the sector’s climate actions. Greening culture: Are we on track? illustrates the arts and culture sector’s carbon impact for 2022/23 and breaks down the data to help the sector understand what it needs to do to reach its net-zero targets.
As for previous years, we received reports from organisations in three streams:
- Creative Scotland regularly funded organisations (RFOs).
- Organisations receiving revenue funding from the City of Edinburgh Council’s Culture Service.
- Edinburgh Festivals, who are members of Environmental Sustainability Working Group (ESWG).
In total, the environmental reporting cohort comprises 131 organisations, with some overlap across the three streams; for example, Edinburgh International Festival is in all three. For this reason, we divide the results via three separate categories to gain umbrella results for core emissions:
- Venues, museums and workshops – 53 organisations
- Festivals and producers – 58 organisations
- Sector support – 20 organisations
Core emissions encompass energy, water, travel and waste. The total core emissions for 2022/23 was 8590 tonnes CO2e. Although this represents an increase of 22% compared to the previous year, the figure is 5% less than total core emissions reported in 2019/20, the year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, overall, the sector is continuing its downward trend year on year.
Reporting in line with the updated framework
This is the first report since the mid-2023 update of the environmental reporting framework and guidance, which introduced some new areas of reporting and asked some additional questions to ensure data quality and our understanding of individual organisation’s and the wider sector’s needs.
The new and expanded reporting areas are:
- Digital emissions
- Procurement
- Governance
- Influence
- Adaptation
- Climate justice
Statistics in the 2022/23 report were drawn from 1086 unique emission datapoints, more than any previous year and 141 more than 2018/19 when there was the equivalent number of reporting organisations (131). Additional insights came from the further 5000+ qualitative and quantitative reported datapoints beyond the emissions.
One upshot from organisations reporting from more emission sources is that, in principle, it will likely lead to an increase in overall emissions over the next few years; not because the sector is doing worse, but because it is measuring more and reporting more.
Top takeaways
Core emissions
- Gas and electricity make up 97% of energy emissions or 60% of all core emissions.
- Although 91% of waste emissions are from landfill, these emissions have reduced by 64% since 2018/19.
- The biggest sticking point is the difficult balance between air travel and international work. International travel represents 55% of travel emissions.
Additional emissions or reporting areas
- One third of all organisations are aiming for net zero by 2030.
- 94% of organisations know the risks of a changing climate, but only 3% (or four organisations) have a fully realised adaptation plan. We believe this suggests a gap in the sector’s knowledge and confidence around creating a plan and, as a result, we are developing a series of opportunities focused on adaptation.
- Audience travel, reported by only 16 organisations, is 12163 tonnes CO2e, or 140% of the core emissions.
- 84% of organisations reported influence actions.
A key conclusion from Greening culture: Are we on track? is that although the arts and culture sector contributes a tiny proportion to Scotland’s total emissions (less than 0.0001%), the sector has a unique opportunity, and perhaps a responsibility, to use its influencing power to help catalyse the change that will reduce the country’s overall emissions.