Emissions still spiking

[frnsys]

From ~40 to ~500 gigatonnes in one year

[frnsys]

I just had a session that went from about 40 to > 200 Gt within a year or two. Main factor is a jump in electricity demand:

Analyzing the snapshots of that session:

• The electricity demand spike happens around the 14th year, from ~25,600TWh to 1,058,773TWh
• The projects that complete that year are: {'One-Child Policy', 'Wood Skyscrapers', 'Universal Abortions & Contraceptives', 'Marine Protected Areas'}
• The projects that were already completed by that year are: {'Floating Wind Turbines', 'Perennial Cereals', 'Indigenous Land Management', 'Food Waste Campaign', 'Green Hydrogen', 'Battery Storage Network'}

Then main process differences are: Before:

[('Floating Wind Turbines', 0), ('Nuclear Power', 2), ('Coal', 2), ('Solar PV', 4), ('Concentrated Solar Power', 0), ('Petroleum', 11), ('Hydropower', 3), ('Cellular Meat', 0), ('Blue Hydrogen', 0), ('Terrestrial Wind Power', 3), ('Petroleum Power Gen', 1), ('Organic Crop Ag', 0), ('Green Hydrogen', 0), ('Industrial Livestock Ag', 20), ('Grey Hydrogen', 0), ('Algae Biofuels', 0), ('Smallholder Farms', 6), ('Natural Gas Power Gen', 5), ('Nuclear Fusion', 0), ('BECCS', 0), ('Industrial Crop Ag', 14), ('Thorium Nuclear Power', 0), ('Regenerative Ag (Livestock)', 0), ('Biofuels', 3), ('Coal Power Generation', 4), ('Organic Livestock Ag', 0), ('Vertical Farming', 0), ('Natural Gas', 4), ('Breeder Nuclear Power', 0), ('Regenerative Ag (Crops)', 0)]

After:

[('Floating Wind Turbines', 0), ('Nuclear Power', 2), ('Coal', 2), ('Solar PV', 5), ('Concentrated Solar Power', 0), ('Petroleum', 6), ('Hydropower', 3), ('Cellular Meat', 0), ('Blue Hydrogen', 0), ('Terrestrial Wind Power', 4), ('Petroleum Power Gen', 1), ('Organic Crop Ag', 0), ('Green Hydrogen', 5), ('Industrial Livestock Ag', 20), ('Grey Hydrogen', 0), ('Algae Biofuels', 0), ('Smallholder Farms', 11), ('Natural Gas Power Gen', 5), ('Nuclear Fusion', 0), ('BECCS', 0), ('Industrial Crop Ag', 9), ('Thorium Nuclear Power', 0), ('Regenerative Ag (Livestock)', 0), ('Biofuels', 3), ('Coal Power Generation', 0), ('Organic Livestock Ag', 0), ('Vertical Farming', 0), ('Natural Gas', 4), ('Breeder Nuclear Power', 0), ('Regenerative Ag (Crops)', 0)]

I think it's the green hydrogen that's responsible for the change (it goes from 0% to 5*5=25% of all fuel production)

Right now in the editor we have something like 45kWh electricity input for 1kWh of hydrogen fuel so it's incredibly inefficient. I need to see what the expected EROI is for the different hydrogen fuel technologies and see if it's lower than that.

Otherwise what do we do in that scenario? Do we try to stop the player or just let them spike electricity and emissions? That might be ok as long as it's clear why it happened, but then we need to figure out how to present that.

[frnsys]

This bug also came up from this way (from Son La):

1. At the start spent all points on: desalination plants, DAC, indig land mgmt, land protection, marine protected areas
2. Also edited processes: dropped coal power and put all into solar and terrestrial wind; lowered petroleum and all into blue hydrogen, half ind ag culture and split into regen ag and vertical farming

This lowers emissions to ~20 by the end of the first cycle (2025) and then in the middle of the second cycle then emissions spike.

[frnsys]

I've narrowed it down to Vertical Farming as the issue...to reproduce:

1. At the start of the game:
   • Reduce Ind Ag (Crops) from 70%->55%
   • Increase Vertical Farming from 0%-15%
2. Play until the 2030 report.
   • Emissions should spike from ~44 to ~390 GtCO2eq

[frnsys]

Checked my math and the value that I entered for vertical farm energy usage (1.83kWh/kcal) is correct. So this is, as far as I can tell, working as expected.

So the problem is more about figuring how to handle these cases--do we warn the player or something?

[frnsys]

We decided to warn the player when something like this is about to happen, see 95bff21902b11b30da3dd304015eca0defdce3d9 and 58c641ca97efdbc695a7df79305781c2219b4a1d