Climate Commitment

The video games industry shares the European Union’s belief that addressing climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of the 21st century. As a result, it has taken numerous environmental initiatives and is working to improve the energy efficiency of its devices and services.

Raising awareness through video games

Video games have a unique opportunity to inspire change and raise awareness among their players through gameplay and innovative storytelling. More and more games include content related to climate change and this is something that is positively welcomed by players.

“Video gaming is one of the biggest communication mediums on the planet. We aim to support the industry to encourage gamers to be educated, inspired and activated around the wider environmental agenda, and so far it seems to be working.” (Source: UNEP)

Sam Barratt

Chief of Education and Advocacy, UNEP

About playing for the planet

Playing for the Planet: Annual Impact Report

In September 2024, the Alliance celebrated its fifth anniversary. In under half a decade, it has expanded from a handful of members to a collective of over 50 leading video games businesses driving forward the environmental agenda in games, and beyond. The 2025 Annual Impact report provides a year-on-year review of the work of the Alliance, facilitated by the UN Environment programme, and its membership.

Read here

New report: Code, Climate, Creativity

The Swedish games industry is a low-emission, high-ambition sector with the potential to drive climate benefits beyond its own operations. The report explores the video game industry’s challenges, such as emissions from video gameplay activity, and highlights opportunities to lead in the green transition through innovative solutions like eco-modes, fossil-free energy investments, and green infrastructure. Additionally, the report underscores how video game culture and technologies, including digital twins and serious games, can inspire climate action and support sustainability efforts across sectors.

Download here

Beyond the Endgame: How Climate and Nature Enhance Game Narrative

The resource offers a games industry-tailored playbook that lays out the business and creative opportunities for studios to explore climate storytelling through their games, and some suggested tools and practices to help them achieve this.

Download Guide

Video Games Europe Secretariat’s commitments

During the 2021 EU Green Week, Video Games Europe became an Associate Member of the United Nations-facilitated Playing for the Planet Alliance and supported Green Game Jam, which aims to mobilise 1 billion video game players to take action on the climate crisis.

With the help of ClimatePartner, Video Games Europe Secretariat measured its environmental impact for 2020, estimated at 17,570 tCO2 eq. The calculation follows the GHG Protocol and includes Scope 3 emissions. We are committed to repeating this exercise each year in order to achieve continuous climate neutrality.

Games Console Voluntary Agreement

In 2015, Nintendo, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Microsoft agreed with the European Commission to further improve the energy efficiency of games consoles. They launched the Games Consoles Voluntary Agreement (GCVA), which includes provisions for energy and resource efficiency that apply to both current and future generations of games consoles.

It is estimated that the GCVA will save 48 TWh of energy over the lifetime of current-generation consoles (equivalent to Greece’s annual electricity production in 2019). To ensure continuous improvement, the agreement is reviewed every two years. Source: https://efficientgaming.eu/

The industry also contributes significantly by sharing its expertise in ensuring that proposed solutions are both efficient and technically feasible.

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