Getty Images; THR Illustration The Trump administration may be rolling back environmental protections on a mass scale. But as fuel prices fluctuate amid the war in Iran, the White House has, perhaps inadvertently, provided an opportunity for sustainable power alternatives to gain a greater foothold — at least on film and television productions.
With the price of diesel changing by the minute but generally trending up (around $2 higher than one year ago according to AAA), the entertainment business has the chance to bypass the unpredictability of cost fluctuations by turning to more eco-friendly power sources, Hollywood sustainability advocates say.
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When it comes to greener choices on sets, “A lot of times, people think it’s about doing the right thing, which it absolutely is, but it’s also increasingly about doing the smart thing,” says Sam Read, the executive director of the Sustainable Entertainment Alliance, a group including The Walt Disney Co., NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, Amazon MGM Studios, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. Discovery, A24, and the film and television academies that is focused on environmentalism in Hollywood. “That’s an area where we are seeing a lot of advancement.”
Though diesel generators have long been about as standard on productions as clapper boards, alternative on-location power solutions like mobile battery systems, solar power and hydrogen power units have increasingly been making an appearance in recent years. Take the examples of the second season of Amazon Prime’s Fallout and Netflix’s first season of Ransom Canyon, which made headlines last year by powering their base camps with solar power. Electric and hybrid vehicles are beginning to replace some traditional gas- and diesel-guzzling production vehicles, appearing behind the scenes on projects like the Peacock series All Her Fault and the Universal film Him.
Using these alternatives can have real impact, as fuel consumption from production vehicles and generators has been found to be the single largest contributor of carbon emissions on film and television sets. The latest emissions report from the Sustainable Entertainment Alliance stated that fuel accounts for 66 percent of emissions on large film sets and 60 percent of emissions on one-hour scripted dramas.
It’s unclear how many productions are currently adopting these new technologies due to unpredictable fuel prices. Gale Webster, the owner of solar-powered trailer purveyor GreenLite Trailers — whose products were used on both the Fallout and Ransom Canyon sets — says he hasn’t yet been getting calls from creatives complaining of fuel prices. He is seeing a “huge uptick” in business at the end of this month going into May, but he feels “that’s not driven by fuel costs, but by tax incentives [in California] that have kicked in.” The potential savings in fuel costs, in other words, are just an added bonus.
Additional sources say it’s too soon to tell if fuel prices are pushing more sets toward more sustainable alternatives to diesel generators.
But at least one firm has noticed a trend toward sustainable solutions since fuel prices began a general upward climb in late February. Garin Josey, COO of film and TV at equipment rental and production services company Sunbelt Rentals, says in a statement, “We’ve noticed a real shift in the entertainment industry toward eco-friendly business practices.” Josey adds, “Productions are looking for more sustainable ways to operate, and that’s driving a bigger focus on electric equipment solutions.”
One traditional barrier for productions to adopting these alternatives on a wider scale is that they can be more expensive up front than diesel generators. An analysis published in late 2025 from the Clean Mobile Power Initiative, RMI and Third Derivative found that battery storage systems can be up to two times the cost of a traditional diesel generator and hydrogen power units can be up to three times the cost.
True Detective: Night Country producer Mari-Jo Winkler, the Sustainability Task Force co-chair at the Producers Guild of America, notes that productions “might get sticker shock with how much a solar trailer costs versus a fuel-based trailer.” She adds, “But then when they see what they’re going to save in fuel, there’s a bigger offset today than there was three months ago.”
Another problem historically has been the limited supply of these systems. When demand rises, so will supply, advocates say, and the economies of scale will kick in and help lower upfront prices. “When you didn’t have a lot of supply, then the prices are higher, and it’s a real chicken and egg [situation] because we have to show the demand to get them to innovate,” says Queen of Katwe producer Lydia Pilcher, Winkler’s fellow Sustainability Task Force co-chair at the Producers Guild.
In the meantime, there are additional sustainable choices that can also help Hollywood’s bottom line. At a moment when budgets remain tight, cutting down on the meat being served by catering, going paperless and encouraging reusable water bottles are easy ways for a set to keep costs low while also being eco-friendly.
Reusing materials — whether that’s costumes, props, materials or sets, for instance — is a classic choice that allows projects to both save both money and reduce waste. M Woods, the co-chair of the green committee at the Art Directors Guild, notes that “99 percent of the time” it’s cheaper to reuse a set than to create a new one. “I would much rather pay a construction coordinator to lengthen a set or modify it than build something entirely new from scratch, even though it can be more annoying for those people,” says the production designer and art director.
Production designer Anu Schwartz points to his experience on both seasons of Apple TV’s Your Friends & Neighbors. That show used a lot of “swing sets” that could be reused in multiple ways while Schwartz, who is also the sustainability committee chair at United Scenic Artists, Local 829, also made sure to repurpose standing (read: longer-lasting) sets in new ways. “Carting costs are expensive,” he notes. “So if you either reuse or give away at the end of a production, that can help with minimizing carting costs. Likewise with material costs.”
In the absence of the federal government incentivizing companies to make more environmentally friendly choices, state and/or local policies may also offer a way forward. This year, Illinois became the first state to offer a sustainability boost in its film and television tax incentive program, implementing a 5 percent credit for productions that meet green criteria established by its film office and commerce department.
In addition to encouraging more productions to consider the environment, “That sort of [policy] has this great trickle-down effect,” notes the Sustainable Entertainment Alliance’s Read. “That means more batteries are going to be available in that location because they know more people are going to be wanting them” — which could eventually bring down costs for those batteries.
Even as the U.S. government reinvests in fossil fuels, price differentials could offer some real temptation for the entertainment industry to break old habits and move in a more environmentally friendly direction.
This story appears in The Hollywood Reporter’s 2026 Sustainability Issue. Click here to read more.
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