The gaming industry is reliant on the technology related to computing, distribution, manufacturing, servers and so on, but while that technology helps people to escape from reality, it is also contributing to the horror of climate change.
However, the industry has been working to cut down, or at least slow, the impact it has on climate change, with a number of companies doing their bit to minimise their carbon footprint including by making more sustainable casinos.
The gaming industry can do a great deal to reduce that footprint. Some companies have made the switch to recyclable power, finding different power providers that are 100% offset are green energy and which in many cases actually help to cut down their own power bills at the same time.
Other tactics that some gaming companies have been using include paying their employees to make use of public transportation and coming up with a system documenting all of their international trips.
What are the higher-ups doing?
The giant gaming companies such as Microsoft, EA, Sony and Nintendo make use of a lot of energy and, as the biggest names in the industry, they arguably have the biggest responsibility to respond to the issues surrounding their carbon footprint, so what are they doing?
As it turns out, quite a lot, with Nintendo making use of 98% renewable energy already and other companies leading the push for carbon-neutral or even negative footprints throughout the entirety of the gaming industry.
EA has been pushing its sustainable operations plan, wanting to cut down on its carbon footprint, manage their use of energy and water more closely and make decisions that are more environmentally conscious in the office.
In its 2021 impact report, EA revealed that it had been making use of a wide array of sustainable energy strategies – including the use of room sensors and LED lighting to cut down on energy use, buying more eco-friendly supplies, and going so far as to partner up with cloud providers offering robust energy efficiency strategies that result in far fewer data centres.
EA claims that its efforts have already resulted, over the course of one single year, in massive kWh reduction, five million gallons of water being recycled and used for landscaping and 30,906 pounds of waste being recycled and/or turned into compost instead of ending up in landfill.
Google has also been working on its carbon footprint. The company has actually been carbon neutral for 15 years now since 2007 and, in 2017, it became the first company of such a size to match its yearly electricity consumption with renewable energy, repeated the trick again the following year and then in 2019, made history by becoming the biggest ever corporate buyer of renewable energy.
Microsoft is also making moves to become a big name in the industry’s carbon battle by becoming completely carbon-negative within the next eight years.
The fight to reduce carbon emissions is ongoing but gaming companies are doing their bit to help.