Prometheus is a hands-on simulator for carbon markets: intensity-based systems and absolute cap-and-trade. Run a firm, weigh abating against buying allowances, and watch a live market discover its price.
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intensity + cap-and-trade modes·benchmarking / grandparenting / hybrid·India CCTS sectors fully calibrated·Professional mode multiplayer·used to train policymakers and sector experts·free to use
THE MARKET COMES ALIVE
The journey every emissions trading system makes — from obligations on paper to a price discovered in the open. Prometheus simulates each stage.
01 · INTENSITY MARKETS
Intensity-based systems set obligations per unit of output. Prometheus models that architecture, the one behind India's CCTS, China's national ETS, and Indonesia's ETS: benchmarks that tighten annually, settlement computed after each period against realised output. India's CCTS is the most fully calibrated case in the simulator, with real sector baselines, emissions intensities, and abatement costs.
02 · COVERED SECTORS
Each obligated sector enters with its own production baseline, growth rate, and marginal abatement cost curve — so a refinery and a textile mill face the same market with very different options. The seven sectors below are India's CCTS sectors, the most fully calibrated dataset in the simulator.
03 · MARKET ARCHITECTURE
An absolute system fixes the total quantity of allowances and tightens it over time. An intensity-based system sets obligations per unit of output, so the constraint scales with production. Prometheus models both — side by side.
── absolute cap·╌╌ intensity-based
04 · PRICE DISCOVERY
Every order meets a continuous double-auction order book. The clearing price emerges from firms' actual abate-or-buy decisions — supply and demand discovered in real time.
05 · EXTERNAL PRESSURE
The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism prices the carbon embedded in imports like cement and aluminium — sectors that intensity-based schemes such as India's CCTS cover. Lower emissions intensity means a smaller bill at the border, and the pressure shows up in the market.
HOW IT WORKS
Every game runs the same loop a real emissions trading system does — you make the decisions, the market sets the price.
Each firm starts with a compliance obligation — an absolute allowance budget under cap-and-trade, or an emissions-intensity benchmark per unit of output under an intensity-based system.
Read your marginal abatement cost curve and decide which emission cuts are worth funding, working from the cheapest tonnes upward.
Buy or sell allowances with other firms on a live order book whenever the market price diverges from your own cost of abating a tonne.
A continuous double auction turns every firm’s decisions into a clearing price — supply and demand discovered in real time, not assumed.
At period end, settle against your cap: surrender allowances, bank surpluses, or pay penalties — then review profits, emissions, and compliance.
THE MARKET, RESOLVED
This is what a market that found its price looks like. In the simulator, you are one of the firms making it move — abating, trading, and settling against your cap.
Free · no installation · runs in the browser
price discovered · continuous double auction