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We've been witnessing the effects of climate change for decades. According to NASA statistics, the Earth's surface temperature has risen by 1.18 degrees Celsius since the end of the 19th century. Since 1969, ocean temperatures have increased by 0.33 degrees Celsius. Between 1993 and 2019, the world lost an average of 279 billion tons of continental glaciers per year. Global sea levels have risen by about 20 centimeters over the past hundred years.
At the same time as the rapid development of human science and technology and industry, many by-products have followed, and the above list is only a part of them. Humanity's constant pursuit of progress has also raised the level of carbon dioxide emissions, resulting in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at a new high in human history. In a worrying report by the United Nations IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the organization said: "There is no doubt that human impacts have warmed the atmosphere, the oceans and the land."
A considerable part of this impact comes from the production and processing of entertainment products, including all aspects of the game industry, and the reason is that the game industry relies on computing, servers, manufacturing, distribution, etc.
Games allow us to escape the harsh reality, but part of our fear of the real world is also "contributed" by the game. But the gaming industry isn't turning a blind eye, and in fact, many companies are pushing for reforms in an effort to reduce their carbon footprint.
The impact of the game on climate change
In 2020, Joshua Aslan, Sony Energy Strategy Analyst, conducted a study of PS4 installs in Europe. Aslan counts all PS4 sold in Europe and estimates energy consumption. "If the highest estimate of the frequency of host usage (4.4 hours per day) is realistic, the total power consumption of all PS4s in Europe may reach 27 terawatt hours (27 billion kWh) as of now," he said. Aslan notes that this is equivalent to Hungary's total electricity consumption in 2018, which exceeds Ecuador's annual electricity consumption in 2016.
Counting other regions and host platforms, this number is several times larger, and counting the very power-hungry PCs, this number is much larger. Energy experts Nathaniel Mills and Evan Mills estimate that each PC consumes about 1400 kWh of electricity a year. In their article "Taming the Energy Use of Gaming Computers," they say, "The annual power consumption of a gaming PC is equivalent to 10 consoles, 6 regular PCs, and 3 refrigerators."
"It gives a more intuitive sense of the size of the numbers," says Ben Abraham, a researcher at environment and sustainability.
Abraham is working on a book called Digital Games after Climate Change, in which he shares his findings on the relationship between climate change and the gaming industry.
"I did a survey in early 2020 and asked several game development companies a series of questions like, 'What do you think about the climate crisis?' Are you worried?' "Based on the numbers I got from the Corporate Sustainability Report and the Csrcilability Report, and with the carbon emissions and energy intensity I learned about during the survey, I came to the conclusion that the average employee emits 1 to 5 tons of CO2 per year."
These greenhouse gases are complicit in damaging the atmosphere and accelerating global warming. What is the concept of 1 ton of CO2? Building Energy, a group dedicated to reducing building energy consumption, said, "One ton of CO2 can fill a single-storey bungalow about 4 meters high and about 116 square meters in size." The more fossil fuels are used, the more damage to the atmosphere, the higher the temperature on Earth, and the worse the environment.
Abraham found that every company, studio, and development team he surveyed, including Ubisoft, Nintendo, and Microsoft, emitted between 1 and 5 tons of CO2 per capita. If you multiply that number by the number of developers worldwide (about 500,000 to 4 million, both working in the office and working from home), he said, the annual CO2 emissions from game development are about 3 million to 15 million tons worldwide.
This figure only counts office energy consumption, such as computers, office servers, lights and the like, and does not calculate the energy consumption of playing games, the energy consumption and waste generated by the production and transportation of optical discs, the energy consumption of game servers, and so on.
▲Carbon emissions of some game companies
"That's a huge number," Abraham says, "which means that the game development community emits about the same amount as Slovenia, which has a population of 2 million." And higher than the film industry." According to an infographic by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a reduction of 1 million tons of CO2 emissions is equivalent to the use of 40.88 million liquefied gas tanks for barbecues, the recycling of 350,000 tons of garbage instead of landfilling, the absence of 210,000 private cars a year, and the replacement of more than 100,000 households with zero-emission energy. Combining these figures with Abraham's estimated emissions of 3 to 15 million tonnes, it's not hard to see why many want to address this issue as soon as possible.
Game consoles are also the source of problems. According to Abraham's mass spectrometry analysis of the PS4 CPU, he found that the CPU contained titanium, and titanium could only be loaded into the main machine after going through mining, refining, transportation, processing and other procedures, causing a lot of emissions in the middle.
Abraham said: "These things are in our gaming devices, so it's a tough challenge. And we're still decades away from sustainability."
In addition, when people buy technology products, they also have a habit of "upgrading when they have new products". Each main engine represents tons of CO2 emissions. This situation is more common in the field of mobile phones, and it is often upgraded once a few months. In the past year alone, there have been several versions of the iPhone 13, Pixel 6, and Samsung Galaxy on sale. That's not to mention the older equipment that is still in production.
The use of these devices also causes a lot of CO2 emissions. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, as of 2020, only about 21 percent of U.S. energy consumption is renewable. This means that the remaining energy – whether it's charging a phone or playing with a console – is provided by non-renewable fossil fuels that will continue to increase CO2 emissions.
The CO2 emitted will not disappear out of thin air, but will continue to damage the atmosphere and accelerate climate change. Burning fossil fuels also has more environmental impacts. According to the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Association), "the excavation, processing and transportation of oil, gas and coal underground can cause enormous damage to the landscape and ecology." The fossil fuel industry leases large tracts of land for infrastructure, such as mines, pipelines, roads, etc., as well as facilities for raw material processing, waste storage, and waste treatment. If it is open-pit, it will also destroy the entire terrain in order to expose the minerals. Even if you stop digging, the land will lose its fertility and it will be impossible to return to its original state." This has led to large tracts of land turning into bare wastelands, useless to both humans and wildlife.
What efforts have game developers made?
▲ Un Environment launched the "Play Games, Save the Planet" alliance in 2019, and its current members include Microsoft, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sega, Bandai Namco, Ubisoft, Unity, Tianmei Studios, etc.
There are many ways to reduce the carbon footprint of the gaming industry. While some argue that game companies should persuade and raise awareness of climate change, Abraham believes we should focus our time and energy elsewhere for now.
"Those things can be done later," he says, "and now we're going to focus on immediate change." We must reduce carbon emissions immediately. One of the best ways for game developers is to look at the office environment and ask yourself, "What are we emitting?" How much energy do we consume? Is the electricity we buy coming from renewable sources? If not, can we change to renewable ones?" 」
In an interview with Simon Hayes, Chief Technology Officer of Wargaming's Sydney division, World of Tanks developers, Abraham learned that switching to renewable electricity is very easy.
"It's about switching to a power supply company, and the new company uses 100% green energy or carbon offsetting." It's that simple. And the electricity bill is lower than before, and it saves money. They have also taken other measures. For example, employees can get subsidized on public transportation, and they plan to build a system to record all international travel."
Big companies like Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and EA are now using a lot of renewable energy as well.
"A closer look at Nintendo's CSR report reveals that their renewable energy use rate is 98 percent," Abraham said.
Several other companies we contacted also sent documents showing their efforts to be carbon neutral or negative.
After we contacted EA, they shared their plans to drive sustainability. In EA's 2020 Impact Report, EA said it plans to reduce their carbon footprint, increase environmental awareness, make decisions that take environmental impacts into account more, and manage energy and water use more precisely. The report also shows that they are working hard to promote the digital version of the game and reduce their dependence on the physical version. EA estimates that 49% of games sold in 2020 are digital versions, compared to 33% of sales in 2017.
However, Abraham commented that this shift does not need to be encouraged by the EA at all.
According to EA's latest Environmental Impact Report, they will also continue to work towards sustainability in 2021 to minimise their environmental impact. In the report, the company outlines a range of initiatives, including saving energy with LED luminaires and sensors; buying environmentally friendly consumables; and partnering with low-energy cloud service providers to reduce the number of data centers.
Here are some of the results of the EA:
800 kWh of electricity savings per year for multiple LED projects (EA Redwood Shore, California)
Swapping with LED luminaires, using voltage coordinators, enabling auto-dimmers, saving 820,000 kWh per year (EA Burnaby Canada)
Avoiding 14,019 kg of waste from landfills through waste sorting (EA Burnaby, Canada)
5 million gallons of recycled water per year for landscaping (EA Burnaby Canada)
"Interestingly, their reports still don't have carbon emissions, and I can't find data anywhere," Abraham commented, "which is disappointing, which means that we can only estimate energy consumption, which is certainly not accurate enough, if they can directly publish the data, and then publish how much is renewable energy, how much is fossil energy, what is the emission coefficient." Now we can only estimate for ourselves, which is disappointing and shows that they are not determined enough."
Google also provided some information to show their progress, which Abraham praised, saying, "Google has done a lot of work to reduce its carbon footprint." I looked at the section about data centers and it all looked pretty good. I thought that among American companies, Microsoft was the most using renewable energy, but now Google may have surpassed."
After talking to Google, we learned the following:
Google has been carbon neutral since 2007
In 2017, Google became the first company of its size to use 100% renewable energy
In September 2019, Google spent $2 billion on renewable energy facilities
On average, Google's data centers are twice as energy efficient as a typical enterprise data center. Compared to 5 years ago, the same amount of power can provide 7 times more computing power, and Google will continue to use machine learning to continue to improve energy efficiency.
Finally, Microsoft's Xbox division also provides the following statement:
"Microsoft is committed to sustainability, and while Xbox Series X|S brings a new generation of gaming experiences, we are also continuing to explore how to reduce the environmental impact of products during their life cycle from the perspectives of conceptualization, design, production, packaging, user use, and disposal after the end of the product life. We'll share more of Xbox's sustainability efforts in the future."
Microsoft plans to achieve carbon negatives by 2030 and offset carbon emissions since 1975 through negative carbon technologies (such as afforestation, carbon capture, and carbon sequestration) by 2050
Here are some of the xbox division's results:
"We recently used PCR (Post-Consumer Recycling) resin in the handles of the Electro Yellow and Dawn Action color schemes, which is the first time we've used this material in Xbox hardware. Both color-matched handles contain a portion of resin made from recycled materials such as car headlamp shades, plastic kettles, and discs."
"In addition, most of the available colors for the xbox design lab's controllers use PCR materials, and the usage rate is 30% of the weight."
"Earlier this year, the Xbox team introduced a new feature that allows devices in power saving mode to reduce power from 15 W to 2 W."
Microsoft also has an ambitious goal: to be completely carbon negative by 2030.
"It's more ambitious than most companies," Abraham says, "even more ambitious than most countries, most of which are targeting 2050."
Is it too late?
Climate change has been a known threat since the 1970s, and Abraham believes that humanity is long overdue. "Now that the effects of climate change are so obvious that people can't continue to be ostriches, there's a lot that can be done and needs to be done, even today, but that doesn't mean it's a small challenge," he said.
"We need to cut emissions wherever we can. In part, that's why I'm more focused on the game development space. Switching to a 100% renewable power company is easy, it can be done in a few days, and it can easily make a big difference. But other aspects of the game industry are much more difficult. To produce a brand new host without carbon emissions is a fantasy."
While reforms came a little late, it's not too late to start working towards carbon negatives. But it will take producers, consumers and suppliers to work together to confront the serious climate problems.
Compile: Tony