Carbon Allowances

We have borrowed this concept from the European Union. The basic idea is that each time your asset: power plant, mine, or rig releases CO2 into the atmosphere, you are required to pay.

The goal is to make polluting industries more expensive to run in order to push energy providers to use non-polluting sources.

You can think of Carbon Allowance as a license to release CO2.

A single Carbon Allowance reflects one metric tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere.

Game mechanic

The fossil based assets have Carbon Allowances listed as required inputs. The carbon allowances are purchased automatically when your assets runs. You do not need purchase them manually.

The price is determined for each tick by the game, and is the same for all assets in the same country. Each country can have different Carbon Allowance prices.

Pricing

At the beginning of the era, you can expect the price to be zero, or very low. Each country has CO2 per capita target which is based on the population size. As the country grows and becomes more developed, it will try to achieve stricter CO2 per capita target.

The Carbon Allowance price is determined automatically based on how close the CO2 emissions are to the target. If they are over.

The following will likely change as we are tuning the game:

You can expect price of: $0 to $18 per Carbon Allowance while below the country is below its CO2 target.

$18 to $50 when emissions are over the target to double target. The price can reach maximum of $100, if the emissions are even bigger.

CO2 per capita targets

The following will likely change as we are tuning the game:

The countries are starting with generous target of 8t per capita per year, as the country grows in population, this target will be more strict. A country of 5,000,000 population or more will want to be carbon neutral (target of 0t per capita)

Carbon Capture and Storage - CCS

There are technologies in real-world that allow plants to reduce their carbon footprint by capturing the extra CO2 before its released. Or even assets that pull CO2 from the atmosphere - using power.

We plan to add these to the game, either in the form of upgrades to existing buildings, or standalone buildings.

These assets will create Carbon Allowances, which you can either use yourself, or sell back to the country.