Green My Place, the SAVE ENERGY browser game for public buildings
Green My Place is a multiplayer browser game made by Aalto University's CKIR for SAVE ENERGY, a European project on energy use in public buildings. Its web address no longer loads in November 2026.
Updated
The project behind the game
SAVE ENERGY set out to change how the users of public buildings, public servants and citizens above all, consume energy. It combined real-time information from building management systems with serious games, and it brought together 16 partners, among them public authorities and agencies, universities, research institutes, small companies and corporations. Five large pilots in five countries tested and compared strategies for energy-efficient behavior. According to CORDIS, the pilots measured energy use with electronic sensors and plug adapters and fed the data to a central server, which analyzed consumption patterns and suggested ways to cut energy use and carbon footprint.
CORDIS, the European Union's register of funded research projects, lists SAVE ENERGY as running from March 1, 2009 to October 31, 2011, with pilots in public buildings in Helsinki, Manchester, Lisbon, Luleå and Leiden, and marks the project closed. The work followed the Living Lab method, in which large communities of motivated citizens help create ideas, decisions and recommendations. Each pilot building had a local data collection platform, and a central platform consolidated the results to compare them against energy efficiency models.
How Green My Place worked
Players used a web browser in one of the five pilot buildings and played simple, fast eco-action mini-games to upgrade their own building and make it the best among the five. The top level of play ran through a website, and in one sense the site was the game.
The Center for Knowledge and Innovation Research (CKIR), founded in 1999 at the Aalto University School of Economics, formerly the Helsinki School of Economics, was responsible for the game. Aalto's page says CKIR designed and developed it as a serious, educational game modeled as a massive social online game. Green My Place took first prize in the Best Non-Professional Functional Game category at the 1st European Best Learning Game Competition. CKIR also handled project concept definitions and user research in the pilots, and it took part in the Helsinki pilot group.
What is true today
The game's site does not load. greenmyplace.net, the address where Green My Place was played, shows no site in November 2026. Aalto University's page for the project describes SAVE ENERGY in the past tense, and the CORDIS entry marks it closed. Neither page says whether the game is still available, so its status stays unconfirmed.
Questions about Green My Place
Can Green My Place still be played?
That could not be confirmed. The game's address, greenmyplace.net, no longer loads, and the project pages found do not say whether the game is available.
What was SAVE ENERGY?
A European project, running from March 2009 to October 2011, that combined real-time building data and serious games to change energy use in public buildings in five cities.
Who made Green My Place?
CKIR, the Center for Knowledge and Innovation Research at Aalto University, as part of the SAVE ENERGY project.