Understanding the challenge of the energy crisis – tackling system complexity with megagaming

Climate change is tightly coupled to the usage of energy in different forms. Creating and using sustainable energy solutions is increasingly being recognized as the greatest challenge of our time. The energy crisis concerns everyone who consumes energy or services that rely on energy to be performed, in practice almost everything we buy. However, the temporal and psychological distance to climate change has led to a situation where the consequences of our energy usage often is considered a future problem or “someone else’s” problem. Current methods to increase awareness and understanding of climate change and the need to create sustainable energy solutions are usually based on simulation or negotiation games. Methods similar to crisis management exercises are uncommon. In this paper, we propose to use Megagames, large scale social games, as a method for increasing the awareness of the challenges related to creating sustainable energy solutions. Examples from two Megagame test runs are provided and discussed.