Global carbon dioxide levels continued to rise despite pandemic dip, with fossil fuels demand playing a significant part in it. In Europe, EDF Group, the leading supplier of hydropower in Europe, helps countries to accelerate the ecological transition. This year, the group wanted an activation that was emphasising education to a young audience, as EDF is also the second most visited company in France. However, due to the COVID restrictions, the pedagogical visits inside power stations had to be cancelled. To educate the young audience about the importance of low carbon energy production, we needed to find another place to make a tour.

How to excite young people during a plant tour to show them the benefits of renewable energy for the planet? By bringing them to their world: into the metaverse. One in particular that looks very familiar to our own world: Microsoft Flight Simulator. With 2 Million gamers, the game is a replica of our world, allowing people to discover virtually any area of the world aboard their plane, without emitting CO2 like a real flight.

But most importantly, the game is surrealistic by the fact that each EDF power station is already present and perfectly modelised. That’s how we created the first virtual tour in Flight Simulator, helping the young audience to discover how EDF is addressing the climate crisis with electricity.

In order to reach young gamers with no access to the power stations, EDF needed to activate a crew of experts to share their knowledge on renewable energy inside the game. To catch their attention, it really needed a bold use of Flight Simulator combined with a fun scientific explanation and an exciting tourism experience. The key strategy was to see Flight Simulator not as a game, but as a replica of our world where players can discover the region around the dam, where hydroelectric is produced. By taking off from the dam in the afternoon to fly over a city of 300.000 inhabitants by night, the young audience could experience in real time the volume of renewable energy that a hydroelectric power station can supply, without emitting any CO2.

Like any airlines companies, aircraft can be covered with a special livery in the game. To welcome the young visitors for this unique tour in Flight Simulator, EDF has created its own livery for an amphibious aircraft. And to take off from the dam itself, EDF created a runway with an illuminated buoy on the water. A world first for the community who can now try to land directly to Serre-Ponçon. For 1 hour, the aircraft flew over different local areas to show the benefits such a dam produced for 60 years. During this virtual tour, the pilot engaged his community by challenging them with a poll about renewable energy and some other questions about climate change. Whereas the cabin crew, made of energy experts, explained to the young generation onboard how Serre-Ponçon enhances the development of tourism activities and ensures the preservation of the living space of wildlife around.

Awareness and Entertainment were our first KPIs: for the first virtual tour in a video game, whereas EDF power stations were closed to the public, we got 13.770 viewers during the live. The equivalent of 40% of the annual trafic dam, just in 1 hour, and the equivalent of 34 Boeing 777 seats without emitting such as CO2. The visit generated 3000+ comments, most of them positive. And most importantly, EDF could answer hundreds of questions about the crucial role of energy to address climate change and how a power station like Serre-Ponçon is a good example to help countries to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.