This Climate Board Game Tests Whether You Can Run A Sustainable Business

Do you think you could be a successful leader of a sustainable business? How do you plan to navigate challenges imposed by climate change? These are questions you’ll have to think about when you play Net Zero Game 2050, a new board game that gets players thinking about how to combat the biggest threat to our planet today. 

Net Zero Game 2050 is a brand new board game that has launched to get people thinking about running a sustainable business. Developed by a Danish company of the same name, the game puts players into the shoes of a sustainable business CEO. The mission is to create a carbon-neutral portfolio of companies in different sectors, while responding to real-life climate events over the course of the game. 

Net Zero Game 2050

The board game itself comes in a round box, sustainably designed and made from wooden materials. There’s a rulebook that guides players through all the climate keywords and lingo, as well as 26 “carbon event” cards, money coins and “carbon coins”. 

Players can adopt different titles, with business positions such as green executive officers, green risk officers and green sustainability officers available for grabs. 

“We call it sustainability meets capitalism,” said the developers of the game, CEO Soren Jensen and CTO Jesper Lindholt, who are based in Copenhagen. Jensen and Lindholt explained that the entire premise is to get people thinking about how their responses and initiatives as business leaders could impact climate change positively or negatively, which then influences the final outcome of the game. 

Ultimately, players want to get to net-zero to “win” the game. It is calculated by how well the player hits their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which include maximising the company’s values and minimising their carbon emissions. 

Net Zero Game 2050 says that as an educational tool, it is suitable for players aged 14 and up, and is directly linked to understanding multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

Understanding the green transition

Sharing more about the idea behind the game, the developers explained: “The Net Zero Game 2050 provides an exciting gamification and demystification of the green transition towards a carbon-neutral economy.”

“Business is a strong lever for change with a low response time, and our ambition is to gamify its mechanisms and dynamics, its risk and returns,” they added. 

Jensen and Lindholt also believe that the game is one of the best ways to get people interested in sustainability and tackling climate change, describing their invention as “an excellent example of how we can address an important global topic and having fun at the same time.”

A similar idea has been started by Hong Kong entrepreneur Cyril Lee, who designed a board game called Loop: Life Of Ordinary People, to promote SDG 12 of responsible consumption. Over the course of the game, players are encouraged to think about their spending habits, how much they are being influenced by marketing and cognitive biases, and how they can choose sustainable non-material alternatives for fulfillment. 

All images courtesy of Net Zero Game 2050.