Pokemon GO: What is the Environmental Impact?

I was walking through a parking lot near my house the other day that is the site of two PokeGyms (one at either end of the parking lot). In a period of about five minutes, I saw no fewer than three cars pull in playing Pokemon GO. How did I know they were playing Pokemon GO? Well, the parking lot is for a bank and it was after hours, so the lot was empty. They also parked for about two minutes at one end of the parking lot and then moved to the other end of the parking lot (from one gym to the other). So, it was pretty obvious these were Pokemon GO players.

This got me to wondering about the carbon impact of this phenomenally popular game. I want to start by pointing out that my intent is not to slam Pokemon GO or the idea of augmented reality real world games. As a long-time player of Niantic’s first AR game (Ingress), I’ve been very impressed by its ability to get people out of their houses and into their communities, exploring locations they probably never knew existed, and meeting with other players. Pokemon GO is based on Ingress and has many similarities (including the fact that many of the PokeStops and PokeGyms in Pokemon GO were located at portals in Ingress). Essentially, Ingress built the map for Pokemon GO.

The big difference between Ingress and Pokemon GO is that Ingress has a faithful and dedicated global following, but the total number of players are just a small fraction of the estimated 25 million daily active users of Pokemon GO.

That’s what got me to wondering what the environmental impact of this phenomenal game could be. So, I did a very simplistic analysis of the carbon cost of Pokemon GO. Note that I am ignoring the cost of powering and cooling the server farms supporting the huge Internet traffic load of 25 million users. I just wondered how much carbon dioxide was generated by people driving their cars to play the game.

I assumed that 10% of Pokemon GO players are driving. (I think this is actually a conservative estimate, but I would rather underestimate than overestimate.)

I also assumed that they drive an average of 10 miles round trip while playing. (Also, very likely to be an underestimate. This rather interesting article about using a Traveling Salesman Problem solver to find the optimal route for the 551 PokeStops and PokeGyms in Cincinnati would still have a highly motivated Pokemon player traveling 223 miles!)

I used the current US fleet average for fuel efficiency of 25 miles per gallon and the EPA calculation of 0.008887 metric tons of carbon per gallon of gasoline.

Putting it all together:

2.5 million cars x 10 miles per car / 25 miles per gallon x 0.008887 metric tons of carbon dioxide per gallon of gas = 8,887 metric tons of carbon dioxide per day

To put this number into perspective, for the same amount of carbon dioxide emissions, you could power 1156 homes in the United States for a year.

Something to think about before you hop into the car to play Pokemon GO…