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Clean Play Lets Gamers Crowdfund Solar Farms

Wall Street Journal Markets •
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New Play Station service offered by climate-tech startup Clean Play wants to turn gamers into clean-energy benefactors. In terms of their energy usage, videogames in the U.S. are estimated to produce more greenhouse gases every year than five million cars. A group of former gaming executives say they want to atone for damage the industry has caused the environment. They are offering the gaming community the chance to collectively power clean-energy projects through a new Play Station service that costs $34.99 a year, or $3.99 a month. Members pay for rewards—such as a deal on a new outfit for a golfing avatar, or a cowboy hat for PGATour—and in turn, the executives commit to paying for renewable energy.

“I’m old—I’ve been around the gaming industry for a while, and now I’m helping to clean up one of my messes,” Rich Hilleman, a former Electronic Arts executive, said of the industry’s power consumption. Hilleman, along with a former Xbox executive, co-founded Clean Play, a San Francisco-based climate tech startup. It operates a rewards program for gamers called Super Power that is essentially a version of clean-energy crowdfunding.