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 do we know about it so far? Not much! But the one detail that might be relevant is that it now has an exhaust port, and my guess is this might be for the higher performance (read: higher power consumption) mode when it's plugged in. That said, these mobile efficiency chips are already leaps and bounds ahead of pure performance ones, and trends to system on chip integration might suggest that even the performance mode (performance cores?) might still be real low power, like Apple silicon. The only info I could find on the possible CPU/GPU for the new Switch 2 suggested it might be an ARM chip, the Cortex-A78AE which in some shop listings I've seen for boards with a (smaller) Nvidia GPU suggest a power consumption between 7 and 15 watts. That's a little higher than the current Switch, once you add in the additional powered components like screen, storage, RAM etc.
But it's clear the mobile form-factor is driving a huge focus on energy efficiency the likes of which we aren't seeing on desktop (or console for that matter).
Xbox Repairability
Microsoft are improving the repairability of Xboxes with more parts being made available to consumers, and a new non-Microsoft third-party repair service (US-only so far)
replacement components for the three Xbox Series X|S console options are now available for purchase via the Microsoft Store and replacement console parts are also now available for purchase online via the Microsoft Repair Hub on iFixit. With the purchase of replacement components previously limited to controller parts and only available through the Microsoft Store, these additional repair options allow players to choose the repairability solution that works best for them, even if their console is out-of-warranty.
Plus some changes to Series S at the software level improving efficiency of video rendering?
“Through recent system updates to Xbox consoles, we have also made significant advancements in how Xbox Series S handles video content. So far, these improvements have led to an average reduction approaching 10% in power consumption across all media apps on Xbox Series S, contributing towards lowering Microsoft’s usage-based carbon footprint and potentially allowing players to save on their monthly electric bills.”

NVIDIA’s 2023 sustainability report
I don't want to linger too much on this one, but some highlights from the full report. [PDF] Energy efficiency is touted from a climate angle. Efficiency is good! But unless it comes credibly embedded in a plan to for net zero, that also takes into account future forecast of sales and total energy consumption then I think companies are riding the increasingly narrow line between legitimacy and greenwashing.

The meaningful targets they have set are in Scope 1 and 2 – and achieving 100% renewable power will be a substantial achievement when they get there.

But let's put that Scope 2 figure into context:

Yeah so Team Green is working on what is essentially the smallest component of their corporate impact on the planet. That's better than doing nothing, honestly, and it's where I'd start too. But it's hardly sufficient to the challenge of the moment.
Scope 3 targets (in the image 2nd image above) mentions "engaging manufacturing suppliers... with the goal of effecting supplier adoption of science-based targets" which would be far more meaningful, and a much bigger challenge. We will watch with great interest the effects of these supplier engagements, and just which (if any) are willing and able to adopt SBTi targets.
Lastly, just in case you were wondering which Scope 3 categories Nvidia is counting – only the upstream ones! That means those numbers for Nvidia gaming GPU power consumption I estimated in the last piece? Yeaaaaah unfortunately they're not on Nvidia's corporate books – and if they were, they'd almost certainly more than double its footprint with gaming alone. I shudder to think what all its ML and AI chips would add up to.

TSMC’s 2023 sustainability report
I've not paid a lot of close attention to TSMC before either – but here's another Great Big Whopping Number from their 2023 sustainability report [PDF]– 11.7 million tonnes of Scope 1 & 2 emissions from TSMC. There's also a Scope 3 figure that inflates that by a further 7.6 million tonnes... but not statement on what categories are included in the figure. So TSMC is probably doing upwards of 20 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions worth of damage to the planet per year – that's in the same ballpark as the entire games industry. Big Tech eh? Big emissions.

New environmental impacts of digital tech observatory from ADEME and ARCEP
Spotted via the JYROS newsletter.

Crazy Climate Corner

Pre-historic ancient microbes
(To the tune of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)
There is great interest in a trans-Arctic shipping route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans because it could shave five days off the current transit time through the Suez and Panama Canals for voyages between Asia, Europe, and eastern North America. Shipping interests eagerly anticipate the point when the trans-Arctic sea routes are ice-free year-round. Ships move about 10 billion tons of ballast water around the world annually. Ships typically dump their ballast water, which helps maintain ship stability, in port and take in new water for the next journey. Expanded Arctic shipping brings with it a severe threat of microbe exchange between more southerly and Arctic waters. David Lodge, professor at Cornell’s Atkinson Center for Sustainability, has studied the explosion of invasive species in the world’s ports and coastlines. There is little data on the Arctic, so he stresses he is speculating, but says, “I think ships are the more likely way to bring quite novel organisms including microbes into the Arctic and out of the Arctic.”

FT piece on skyrocketing insurance costs in 2024
Hurricanes, fires and other disasters caused $320bn in losses in 2024… Around $140bn of these losses were covered by insurance.
Bloomberg piece on the 30-year mortgage and climate disasters
What was their home is now a cement slab, with bits of granite and linoleum flooring sticking out. The county sent a $38,000 bill, which incurs interest monthly. The Pelleys owed more than half a million dollars for a home that no longer existed on land that was unbuildable. Insurance, the Pelleys say, still refused to pay. Water didn’t come into the house into this second event, either, as it had been erased.
Copernicus data on 2024 temperatures is now available
In case you want to see why things were so bad...
The Global Climate Highlights 2024 report is now online. Delve in the analysis and access all the charts, information, and data on temperature, sea ice, precipitation, and greenhouse gas concentrations. Explore the data that defined 2024: https://bit.ly/40kQpcz #C3S #GCH2024
— Copernicus ECMWF (@copernicusecmwf.bsky.social) 2025-01-10T07:00:00.000Z
Checking in on Data Centres
First, this piece on the LNG power boom for new data centres. A veritable who’s-who of fossil fuel scumbags in this piece on the oil & gas industry selling gas to power new data centres. Exxon, Chevron, and a bunch of companies you’ve probably never heard of. Names and addresses people, names and addresses.

Data centres and water security

PUE data comparisons for different data centers

TikTok’s annual carbon footprint
Also about the same size as the global games industry

Videogames, the Anthropocene, and Other Problems of Scale: Methodological Notes for the Study of Digital Games in Times of Ecological Crisis
By Paolo Ruffino
In this article I critique and evaluate a number of methodological approaches to the study of videogames and their relationship to the Anthropocene. I identify two dominant tendencies. Firstly, videogames are seen as tools that can potentially inform and educate their players about humanity’s impact on our planet, and possibly suggest virtuous behaviours. Secondly, videogames are analysed for their strategies of representing the Anthropocene, for example, for the ways in which they depict the natural environment or imagine a post-human world. I call these the ‘instrumental’ and ‘representational’ approaches. Both methods of research and game design are valid and useful in many ways, and both rely on their scalability: through repeated engagement with videogames that draw on the instrumental and/ or representational approach, players’ reflections on their experience are argued to scale up and influence future behaviour and thinking in real life. I suggest that, in parallel with these methods of critique and design, we can consider the possibility that the Anthropocene is transpiring and leaking into our entertainment practices, becoming visible through molecular and situated encounters. Players might occasionally articulate their fears and anxieties about the ‘Age of Man’ while responding to videogames that are not explicitly about the Anthropocene. This article argues that the scalability of players’ interpretations can be re-evaluated in all its complexity and unpredictability when exploring the potential of the medium of videogames to open up a post-anthropocentric imagination. This article considers a number of examples from game design, drawing on Timothy Morton’s notions of hyperobjects and subscendence, and Joanna Zylinska’s and Anna Tsing’s reassessment of the notion of scale.
https://gamescriticism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/ruffino-6-a.pdf
Really great interview with French historian of energy Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

You suggest looking at energy and the climate problem without the idea of ‘transition’. How?
Focus on material flows. Then you see that despite all the technological innovation of the 20th century, the use of all raw materials has increased (excluding wool and asbestos). So modernisation is not about ‘the new’ replacing ‘the old’, or competition between energy sources, but about continuous growth and interconnection. I call it ‘symbiotic expansion’.
Wordpress shut down its sustainability team
Sounds like a troll for a CEO? More weird anti-ESG backlash.

Cleantech markets beyond the US
Chinese cleantech exports are less and less reliant on US markets, and so not as exposed to US tariffs – good news for the industry, and also for the developing world. The US is likely to end up isolating its own green tech companies from global innovation too. Not great for the US transition either.

Incredible amount of firmed renewables to be installed in UAE
ABU DHABI, Jan 14 (Reuters) - UAE state-owned renewable energy firm Masdar announced on Tuesday plans to create a new solar and battery energy facility that will deliver 1 gigawatt of uninterrupted clean power and is expected to cost around $6 billion.

The Big Picture
WRI Climate Watch has a bunch of new charts in this blog post showing the 30,000 ft view of things – the global split between different activities and emissions. This is super useful for seeing where the challenges are.

Some good news – EU generated more power from solar than coal in '24

Thanks for reading Greening the Games Industry! January has been a busy month – and a hot one, here in Australia. Hope you are staying well, staying sane, and keeping cool (or warm if you're in the northern hemisphere). Lots we're working on at the SGA – more news very soon.