Many companies in the games industry have already implemented and publicised strategies for achieving climate neutrality. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are among these companies. The following summary explains each of their initiatives in greater detail.

Sony

 

Sony launched its environmental plan, ‘Road to Zero’, back in 2010.^[1] With its global environmental plan, the company is working towards total climate neutrality by 2050; it hopes to offer emission-free products and services and to make its own business activities climate neutral. The ‘Road to Zero’ defines medium-term environmental goals in five-year intervals as milestones towards that ultimate objective.^[2] With its current plan, ‘Green Management 2025’, the goal is to implement the following objectives between the 2021 and 2025 fiscal years:

1. Reduced plastic packaging and energy consumption per product unit
2. Increased use of renewable energies at production sites
3. Greater integration of raw materials and components suppliers into the environmental plan

The current goals were developed based on the progress made and challenges encountered during the previous plan, ‘Green Management 2020’. Additionally, part of the plan is for all locations to use 100 per cent renewable energy by 2040.

Microsoft

With its environmental strategy, Microsoft has set itself the goal of becoming climate-neutral by 2030 and offsetting all emissions the company has generated since its founding in 1975 by the year 2050.^[3] In order to achieve this goal, Microsoft has announced a comprehensive package of measures, including investments of one billion US dollars in a new climate innovation fund to support the development of technologies for reducing and eliminating CO₂. Additionally, the ‘Cloud for Sustainability’ is intended to allow companies to conduct targeted monitoring of their emissions in future in areas such as heating and air conditioning, and to reduce their carbon footprint as a result.^[4] In future, Microsoft also plans to focus on decarbonising electrical grids, which have rarely been able to efficiently combine environmentally friendly sources of energy with growing demand. Microsoft plans to transition to 100 per cent renewable energies for all of its activities by 2025.^[5]

Nintendo

At Nintendo, protecting the climate and the environment is a top priority. A committee chaired by the president of Nintendo has managed the company’s environmental policy since 2011. It sets specific environmental goals that are implemented in accordance with binding plans. In order to reduce its carbon footprint, Nintendo is systematically collecting and evaluating data about how its work processes and products impact the environment. The company uses this data to develop economic improvements to the entire life cycle of its games and consoles, from the design to the eventual recycling process. Its subsidiaries around the world support the company’s environmental policies with their own initiatives.

Here are a few examples: Nintendo focuses on achieving the highest possible level of energy efficiency when designing its consoles. This has resulted in a number of improvements, including significantly longer battery life for the latest Nintendo Switch model. In manufacturing, Nintendo has reduced the resources it consumes by avoiding compound materials wherever possible, for instance. This also makes the products easier to recycle later on. One way that Nintendo of Europe reduces its carbon emissions is to have imported games transported from the port to the distribution centres by train. Nintendo is endeavouring to further improve its own environmental impact through an ongoing evaluation process and continuous improvements.^[6]