Earth Day is held annually on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. We want to take this as an opportunity to reflect on our progress in addressing Sony Interactive Entertainment’s footprint on the planet. As part of Sony Group’s Road to Zero plan, Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has made ambitious commitments to reducing the environmental impact of our products and business activities as well as finding ways to use PlayStation content to inspire social change. Let’s take a look at a few of our key initiatives in the past twelve months. 

  1. Sustainability engagement is popular with our PlayStation community. For the recent Horizon Forbidden West launch, we explored new ways to raise awareness about climate change and protect biodiversity by connecting the game narrative to real-world action. Through this and other consumer engagement activities, we have invested in planting more than a half million trees with selected partners and organizations. This investment contributes to achieving 50% of the UN Playing for the Planet Alliance target for the Green Game Jam 2022. More importantly, it helps advance long-term restoration and protection efforts of forest, coastal, and meadow ecosystems in communities across the world.
  1. We’re investing in high-quality carbon offset projects. To celebrate Earth Day with our PlayStation community worldwide, we are happy to announce that SIE has offset carbon emissions equivalent to 100 million hours of average console electricity use during gameplay*. Through the Gold Standard Organization, we are supporting a combination of initiatives aiding biodiversity and sustainable living within developing countries and investment in new renewable energy capacity. This offset occurs alongside an estimated avoided energy use for PS4** and PS5*** of 57.4 TWh and 0.8 TWh respectively from energy efficiency improvements we’ve made to date, such as efficient chipsets, power supplies, and low power rest modes, which is equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of Greece in 2020. Learn more about the impact of our products here. 
    (*) Based on the average power consumption and carbon emission factors for network-connected PS4 and PS5 PlayStation consoles consoles in use in each global region during 2021. (**) Estimated avoided energy use for PS4 from console launch November 2013 to end of December 2021. (***) Estimated avoided energy use for PS5 from console launch November 2020 to end of December 2021.
  1. We use the power of video games to raise awareness and inspire change. SIE will participate again in this year’s Playing for the Planet Green Game Jam. PlayStation Studios’ Media Molecule is hosting an interactive Green Game Jam for their community to create games on the theme of ‘Sustainable Farming’ in Dreams. Players can submit their creations in Dreams until May 2, 2022. For each of the first 1,300 games created and uploaded during the Game Jam, SIE will plant up to 100 trees for a maximum total of 130,000 trees in partnership with The Arbor Day Foundation. The program is supported by Play4Forests, an UN Environment Programme and UN-REDD initiative as part of the Playing for the Planet Alliance.
  1. Supporting data centers to transition to renewable electricity. We worked with the data centers that house our game streaming servers to ensure their facilities meet the latest efficiency benchmarks, while encouraging them to transition to renewable electricity consumption wherever possible. Using 2020 as a base year, 78% of the electricity used for streaming PlayStation games came from renewable sources*. In addition to that, we purchased offsets to cover carbon emissions calculated from the remaining 22% and we are committed to continue this investment for each subsequent year.
    (*) This approach to calculating emissions is based on guidance from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Standard.
  1. We continued to address the Work-From-Home impact of our employees. Following our approach in FY2020 (April 2020 to March 2021), SIE has also addressed an estimated share of the electricity use for our employees while working from home by purchasing carbon offsets to cover the impact throughout FY2021 (April 2021 to March 2022). Our main SIE offices in the US and Europe continue to use 100% renewable electricity, and our offices in Japan are transitioning to fully renewable electricity by the end of this fiscal year.
  1. Reducing our impact by addressing material usage in PlayStation game boxes. In FY2021, we started integrating recycled plastic in PlayStation game boxes into our supply globally. In total, 10% of the plastic used for producing our game boxes over the year was sourced from post-industrial waste.
  1. Driving change as a united gaming industry. We are a proud founding member of the United Nations Playing for the Planet (P4P) Alliance that launched in 2019 and SIE will continue to work toward contributing to UNEP goals. If you want to learn more about the achievements of the P4P Alliance and SIE’s commitments for 2022, check out the Playing for the Planet Annual Impact Report 2021, which was published in February of  this year.  

While we’ve made some good progress over the past twelve months, we still have a long way to go. We’re excited about the opportunities that are still ahead of us – for Sony Interactive Entertainment, the gaming industry and every single one of us – and we know that we can drive change together. Protecting our planet for future generations means making a difference: we must forge ahead, turn our intentions into action, and make sure we do the right things. We look forward to continuing our commitment as well as sharing updates on our work ahead.