According to one study, the typical land-based casino will blow through 15,080 kWh of power per day. To put that into perspective, this level of casino energy consumption is equivalent to charging your phone, using it, and then recharging it again multiple times for 800 years. That’s just the average casino, too.
Think about how much power those behemoths on the Las Vegas Strip are getting through every day.
This page isn’t about those land-based casinos, though. Our goal is to talk about online gambling and how eco-friendly it is. Of course, we’ll be touching upon land-based casinos throughout, just because the casino energy consumption for them is so high. We want to show you why online casinos are much more viable as an option if you’re planning to gamble and want to do it in a way that is less harmful to the environment.
Energy consumption for land-based casinos
Land-based casinos have huge power needs. This is partly due to the fact that many of them are operating 24/7. If you don’t close, then your lights never get switched off. All those machines will be constantly whirring, food and drinks being prepared etc. Of course, the lights are a huge expense for land-based casinos. Just a small neon sign can take a huge amount of power.
This is why the energy consumption for land-based casinos is so high. Although don’t get us wrong – this doesn’t necessarily mean that land-based casinos are not eco-friendly. Consuming huge amounts of power is never a good thing, but some casinos (particularly those in Las Vegas) are turning towards renewable sources of energy (for example, solar power) to fulfil at least some of their needs.
Power needs for an online casino
Online casinos don’t require the huge amount of power that a land-based casino does. Although, unfortunately, it is exceedingly difficult to find information about how much power they are using.
For starters, online casinos don’t need to heat large areas. They don’t need to light up areas 24/7, either. There won’t be signs that need to attract people into the building. No restaurants. No bars. No whirring machines consuming huge amounts of power. There’ll be some lighting and heating expenses for the staff, but these will be negligible.
Now, you might be thinking: ‘What about live dealer casinos?’ These need to be lit and heated, and the various computers and machines need some sort of power. However, you may be surprised to know that many online casinos will share live dealer rooms. So, the live dealer room that you find on one platform may be the same as the live dealer room on another. This means that online casinos are effectively splitting the expenses for this, and thus they are sharing the power consumption.
For an online gambling platform, the biggest expense will be the server costs (ie the collection of computers that the site resides upon). Depending on the online casino, these servers may be spread around the world. While it is tough to know what hardware these online casinos are running, the cost of powering a server is quite low compared to running a live casino. The average is about 7-15 kWh. An online casino will use multiple servers, but the energy costs of running them are quite low.
You have the energy costs for your computer or your mobile device on top of this too. However, we are going to assume that you’ll be using these whether you’re gambling or not, so it is rather tough to work this into the equation. Still, using either of these will be quite cheap on the power front (we’re talking under $10-$20 a month) so it doesn’t matter too much.
Is an online casino eco-friendly?
This is tough to know, and we reckon most online casinos wouldn’t know either.
As we said, the biggest power consumers for an online casino will be their web servers. A lot of these web servers will be powered by non-renewable forms of energy. This means that they are not eco-friendly. However, we are now starting to see more and more server farms (the industry name of the places where servers are kept) using renewable sources to cover at least some of their power needs. This means that, to an extent, they are eco-friendly.
What we can tell you is that using an online casino will be far less harmful to the environment than using a land-based casino. While there may still be a detrimental impact on the environment when you gamble at one of these platforms, the effect is minimal in comparison to land-based casinos. So, if you want to gamble and are concerned about climate change and the use of renewable energy sources, then gambling at an online casino is your best option.
Online casinos will get more eco-friendly over time
It is worth noting that online casinos will get more eco-friendly over time. This isn’t so much down to the online casino (although, we have no doubt that some online casinos will push to have more eco-friendly operations) but due to how tech is changing.
We wouldn’t be surprised if more and more server farms end up being powered by renewable energy sources, which will massively cut the environmental impact of the servers (although, they do take up a lot of land, which is a problem). Computers will become more efficient too. This means they may consume far less power when in use.
Final thoughts
Land-based casinos use a huge amount of power. Even running the smallest land-based casino isn’t eco-friendly. While it is impossible to know just how much power the average online casino consumes, we’re certain that they consume significantly less power than any land-based casino. Most online casinos are just running on a few computers. So, if you’re concerned about eco-friendly gambling, then always opt for online casinos.
