Greening the Games Industry

Preparing for Change: Climate Risk Analysis in the Games Industry

A couple of newsletters ago, I wrote about CDProjektRED's latest ESG report, with its highly detailed and illuminating analysis of the studio's understanding of its exposure to physical climate risks across different time horizons. Long time GTG readers will know that I've been encouraging

Switch 2 emissions (embodied & use-phase), solar Minecraft, architecture of the Kyoto Protocol, + more – GTG Links 60

Trying to sneak this one out because I've had a lot of this in the backlog and just haven't had a chance to post it yet – [and I was in such a rush I didn't even finish the intro! Nevermind...!] I haven't

Does software use energy directly, or indirectly?

Here’s a question for you. When you boot up a game on your console, your PC, or your mobile phone, what is actually happening? I think a basic description might be something like this. A game (like any software) starts with a series of instructions sent to the CPU,

GHG emissions of films, games and… airports?

There was a story in the Guardian earlier this month that caught my eye: “Disney’s Snow White had higher carbon emissions than the latest Fast & Furious film”. This sort of comparison is possible thanks to the publication of GHG disclosures by Disney associated with the production process. But

ESG Season (CSRD season?) Kicks Off – plus it's GTG Links 59 feat. mobile phone charger research and climate-friendly whales

If you've been following the news around corporate sustainability rules you'll probably be aware that the European Union's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) has started to require particularly large companies to undertake an extensive new reporting process this year. The first out of the

How much could one game industry worth of CO2 cost?

Hello! It's GDC week, so you're probably inundated with news to catch up on – so this one's nice and short. I didn't attend the Game Developers Conference in person this year, however, I did send a video to a fantastic panel called

EU Omnibus: What does it mean for Euro game sustainability? + GTG Links No.58

Hello, we're back after a skip week. And that's because last week the EU Commission dropped a very late, late breaking proposal to change the rules for a bunch of sustainability legislation – from the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) that sets the scope of companies that

What’s the biggest bang-for-your-buck GHG reduction in games – and how do we find out?

One of the perennial challenges for those of us working on decarbonisation in the games industry has been getting a clear and complete big-picture view of the impacts games have on the planet. Without that, we have had to rely on guesswork and the experience of other industries, which can

GTG Links 57 – Beaver Dams, Power Plants, and Important Climate Education Research

It has been a minute since the last news update – and yet, it's a bit of a short one this time. I'm sure that will change very soon as we're heading into ESG reporting season, so we can expect new data and disclosures any

Quick update on European sustainability reporting & what’s new at the SGA

One of the main reasons the SGA exists is to help make life easier for the European games industry and its reporting obligations under the CSRD. This means understanding and implementing the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). I’ve written about how complex I find this system and how ambivalent

GTG Links 56 – Switch 2 power use, 20 million tons of GHGs from chipmakers, wild weather effects, and more

Welcome back to the first GTG Links of 2025. Lots to catch up on since we haven't done a links post in over a month, so no time to waste. Switch 2 This is a bit of old news now, but worth looking at from the sustainability angle.

What’s going on with Nvidia GPUs and PC gaming power consumption

Welcome back, I hope you had a great break, ate some yummy food and enjoyed some time off. Unfortunately, the climate never takes a break, and as I write the multiple fires still threatening large parts of Los Angeles are at the forefront of my mind. Sending all my best

GTG Links 55 – Look ma, I'm in the Post!

Welcome back. We're in the Washington Post today talking about how, while extremely good, energy efficiency in gaming does not get us to 100% net zero emissions on its own. Maybe that's obvious? Maybe it's not! We also need more more more renewable energy

How does the typical game developer get to work?

If you follow my work with the Sustainable Games Alliance on LinkedIn (or on our discord – which you should join), you’ll have already seen that we recently announced the completion of a new component of the SGA Scope standard. As a quick refresher, the SGA standard is a set

GTG 54 – UK exits coal, Swedes get a new carbon calc tool, solar panels in unexpected places, and gaming w/ clean power

Grab your favourite beverage, pull up a chair, and get comfy because we've got almost a whole month's worth of links for you today. Things found amongst the rubble in Lebanon CleanPlay wants to sign gamers up for renewable electricity plans Rich Hillerman and David Helgasson

Climate is economics is political economy is climate

I’m back, at last. I had a thing planned to write here over the last few weeks, but the main findings were “non-conclusive”, so I haven’t written them up. Instead, I wanted to express some slightly vague ideas and gesture at some big challenges that are constantly on

GTG Links 53 – Microsoft's Three Mile Island, EA & T2 Impact reports, and the GHG footprints of the 1%

It's a long weekend here, so I'm spending it playing Dragons Dogma 2 (picked up in the sale), but perhaps you might be interested in some reading? Here's a few of the choice pieces that I read the past fortnight that might strike your

Markets vs mayhem
...or How we choose to govern the climate crisis really, really matters: on the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS)

I think it’s safe to say that the Western world is experiencing a crisis of public governance. Electoral democracy is no longer representing the ‘demos’, captured instead by lobbyists, a widespread disillusionment at the lack of responsiveness of major parties with their traditional social bases hollowed out, and a

GTG Links 52 – Console upgrades, Europe's positive power story, more AI deets, and Super Typhoon Yagi

I am on deadline for a grant app submission this weekend, so this one will be super-mega-rapid fire. I also haven't finished the piece I meant to for last week, so things are starting to pile up. Nevertheless, we press on. Let's check out the trends

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GTG Links 51 – Sustainability awards, rain over the Sahara, climate policy and more extreme weather

Though most of the games industry has been focused on Gamescom the past fortnight, with little other news besides, and no new ESG disclosures to share (still waiting on a few of the big ones) this week's links might seem a bit light on. But the rest of

The Big Scary Number

Last year I spent a couple of months’ worth of newsletter entries trying to figure out the greenhouse gas emissions associated with different parts of the games industry, trying out different assumptions and methods. I never managed to arrive at a single “big scary number” that reflected the true global

GTG Links 50 – Fleshing out the picture of 2023 game emissions + releasing on old hardware + extreme weather and insurance losses + Geoff Mann on climate politics

This week's post is heavily weighted towards new annual disclosures from games companies, and my annual spreadsheet collecting their numbers is filling up (I'm at about 20 out of an expected 30-ish disclosures now) so we are probably about 2/3rds of the way towards a

The Summer of Sustainability, and my new Scope 3 briefing paper

For the past 6 weeks, we at the Sustainable Games Alliance have been running fortnightly seminars and workshops on the sustainability challenges and opportunities facing the games industry in Europe and the rest of the world. In this newsletter, I want to give you a little précis of each one,

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GTG Links 49 – Bumper ESG data from Nintendo, Ubisoft, Embracer, Apple, SEGA, Squenix ++ AI impact news ++++ so much summer heat

This one's a MAMMOTH post – seriously it's like twice as long as the usual links posts, so let's get straight to it. Nintendo's 2023 ESG data Nintendo’s 2023 emissions data has been posted to their website – it’s a bit of

What does climate risk look like for the games industry?

The SGA Webinar we held the other week was great fun – we had a good crowd and some great questions at the end, and as promised the recording is now online. If you missed it, or you just want to hear me talk about my understanding of the main features