Inspiration
Today’s economy was built with the help of fossil fuels as its primary energy source. Fossil fuel energy resources have been fundamental parts to our economy for decades. However, it is one of the biggest problems that the earth is facing today. Due to the CO2 emission of fossil fuel, the level of CO2 on earth is getting higher and higher and causing abnormal environmental behavior such as climate change. Climate change leads to problems such as sea level rise, desertification, and unpredictable weather events. Most importantly, it’s killing adorable polar bears!!!! Unacceptable.
What it does
Our team cares about the well-being of our society as a whole. When thinking about well-being, we have to take environmental sustainability into consideration. Specifically, we focused on how we can raise awareness of the clean sustainable energy source.
When looking at the cost of generating 1 kWh (kilowatt-hour), fossil fuel energy costs $0.087, solar energy costs $0.036, and wind energy costs $0.033. Notice that fossil fuel costs the most out of the three energy sources. Let’s look at the carbon Dioxide emissions per kilowatt hour of each power generation method: fossil fuel energy emits 980g of CO2, wind energy emits 11g, and solar power energy emits 0g. While fossil fuels have the highest cost and CO2 emission per kilowatt hour, our society still relies on fossil fuel. One of the reasons is the lack of knowledge and our team created a game to raise awareness of clean energy sources.
Clean and Renewable energy can be continually replenished through natural processes and provide affordable electricity to people. Even though the cost of building renewable energy facilities is high, once built, operations cost is low since fuel is for free. Therefore, it will lead to relatively stable energy prices over time.
Let us present our game. You are a business owner. Our game simulates the process of running a company and choosing what type of energy resources to use: Coal, Wind, and Solar. This is a collaborative game where a lot of the players work together to sustain the CO2 ppm below 600. The more power a company uses, the more revenue it generates and the more CO2 emission it produces. Your goal is to stay in the normal range, which is between 350 and 450 ppm. If ppm goes over 600 or you run out of capital, the game is over! Choose your energy wisely!
How we built it
We used Express framework for our project. For frontend visualization, we explores chart.js which has excellent features on drawing charts. For frontend-backend communication, we implemented socket.io functions to achieve real-time synchronization. For UI/UX design, we used tailwind to style the layout.
Challenges we ran into
We had trouble calculating how much of emissions affect the ppm level because the earth is just so big. But after dedicated research, we were able to come up with a solution and solve the problem as a team.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are able to create an interactive website that allows multiple users to track their CO2 emissions and how it affects the earth. We have built graph to show how it affects.
What we learned
Environmental friendly energy sources are not as costly as what people think. It is in fact cheaper than fossil fuels. The construction of the eco-friendly facilities is costly, but once built, it operates with little to no cost. Therefore, lead to cleaner earth with better living standards.
What's next for Energy Trade-Offs
We want to perfect this software to raise awareness that environmental friendly energy sources are not as intimidating as one might think. One day, all the business owners will use our website to track their emission and save the earth all together for the future generation.
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