The Innoenergy Skills Institute have collaborated with Blockworks and i2e to release Green Energy City, an educational Minecraft-based game to cultivate the future generation of renewable energy experts.
Launched at EIT InnoEnergy’s The Business Booster event in Amsterdam, the Green Energy City Minecraft game aims at inspiring Generation Alpha, the planet’s first eco-conscious generation, to pursue a future career in renewable energy.
With the ongoing skills shortage in the renewables sector looming, Green Energy City looks to leverage the younger generation’s passion for video games in an educational way to nurture the industry’s future leaders in sustainability.
Speaking at the launch of the game, Oana Penu, the Director of the InnoEnergy Skills Institute, said: “Generation Alpha, the first eco-conscious, really wants to contribute to the sustainability of our society, to make the world a better place.
“We want to make our content available to them, and gaming is one of the most effective learning techniques out there.
“We want to make Minecraft, one of the most played games worldwide, an engaging place where very technical subjects like battery production are accessible to this generation that is very committed to making the planet a better place.”
How does Green Energy City work?
Green Energy City is an immersive Minecraft experience that teaches young learners the essential aspects of sustainable technologies, from developing batteries to solar power.
The game includes an array of puzzles, mini-games, and building activities that utilise the Minecraft framework millions around the world are familiar with to teach vital sustainability lessons.
Green Energy City has three key sections: The Battery Lab, Battery Zone, and Solar Zone.
The Battery Lab provides an introduction to battery technology, such as their history, key components, and how they work.
The Battery and Solar Zones both include five different activities to develop and test students’ knowledge and cover types of batteries, the flow of current, series and parallel circuits, and how energy from the Sun is converted into electricity.
Green Energy City is expected to yield over a million downloads worldwide and is available to download for free through the Minecraft Market Marketplace, with there also a classroom version for Minecraft Education that comes with lesson plans.
Why we must engage the younger generation in renewables
For humanity to successfully execute its greatest challenge in the modern era – the green transition – ensuring an abundant and highly skilled pool of renewable energy professionals will be pivotal.
Overcoming the skills shortage through upskilling and reskilling is an important aspect of this endeavour, but developing a pipeline of young energy expertise is equally vital.
Generation Alpha will represent over two billion people globally by 2025 and, by 2030, will equate to 34% of the world’s population, according to UNESCO.
A Wunderman Thompson Commerce report found that 67% of this generation say saving the planet will be the central mission of their careers in the future.
Informative and engaging resources such as Green Energy City will be key to piquing the interest of this generation and providing the digital building blocks for the careers that will forge a net zero future.
James Delaney, the Founder and Managing Director at BlockWorks, commented: “We’re not here to get kids who already love energy and building batteries; we’re here to get the kids who aren’t engaged in these kinds of topics, but they do engage a lot with video games.
“They spend an enormous amount of their time invested in these games, and so by using a platform like Minecraft, we don’t have to build the audience from scratch. We’re speaking a language that kids understand.”
With tools like Green Energy City, we can transition gamers into planet savers.
