Analysis of CO2eq compensation

The criteria catalogues for the practical implementation of film production by the Austrian Film Institute specify certain MUST criteria that must be met in order to receive compensation.

These criteria specify that only compensation providers of the highest quality are accepted, such as compensation projects with Gold Standard, Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), Certified Emissions Reductions (CER), and recognised projects within the framework of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC).

CO₂ compensation should be seen exclusively as a supplement to your own reduction measures in order to achieve ESG targets or support science-based climate targets. Therefore, a reduction is first achieved through concrete measures (criteria) and only in a second step are unavoidable greenhouse gas emissions offset.

Even with ambitious climate strategies, a certain amount of greenhouse gas emissions are still emitted. CO₂ offsetting makes it possible to reduce residual emissions as long as alternative technical equipment is not widely available for the film industry in Austria or there is an overall comprehensive reduction in transport and/or mobility.

In addition to film production, there is the option of offsetting unavoidable emissions, for example in the area of printed materials or unavoidable flights, when a film is released in cinemas (ÖFI+ exploitation funding including green bonus for cinema releases). The offsets made in this context are very small, which is why a more detailed consideration of exploitation funding is not provided here.

The analysis covers all cinema film projects that have provided compensation services by 31 December 2025 and have been audited by ÖFI.

During the period under review, a total of 50 cinema film projects made compensation payments totalling:

1,793 tonnes of CO₂eq, which corresponds to EUR 43,023.

The average cost per tonne of CO2eq offset is EUR 24.

The majority of greenhouse gas emissions offset and payments made for this purpose relate to feature films. Documentary films account for a significantly smaller proportion. This reflects the different production sizes and emission volumes of the two film genres.

• 9.3% of the total offset amounts are attributable to cinema documentary films
• 90.7% of the total offset amounts are attributable to cinema feature films

The doughnut chart shows the distribution of offset CO₂ amounts by film genre.
Feature films account for the larger share at around 91%, while cinema documentaries account for around 9%. The figures show how the offset measures are distributed across the different film types.

Among the 50 cinema film projects examined, there is a wide range in the compensated amounts for both film genres (cinema documentaries and cinema feature films).

Therefore, the median is more meaningful than the mean (average).

For both film genres, the mean is higher than the median. This means that individual values with particularly high compensation amounts increase the average. The compensated amounts vary greatly, especially for feature films.

The wide range indicates that factors typical of production and technical production decisions have a significant influence on the compensated amounts.

The compensated amounts by film format are as follows:

• Cinema documentary film
  • Median: 8.3t CO₂eq
  • Mean: 11.9t CO₂eq
• Cinema feature film
  • Median: 29.8t CO₂eq
  • Mean: 45.2t CO₂eq