Carbon Trading Game: Learn Emissions Trading by Playing
The fastest way to understand carbon trading is to do it. Prometheus is a free carbon trading game where you run a company inside a live carbon market, decide whether to cut emissions or buy allowances, and watch the price move as everyone trades. You learn how the market works by playing it.
What is a carbon trading game?
A carbon trading game puts you in the role of a company that has to manage its emissions under a carbon market. You receive an allowance budget, you trade allowances with other players, you decide whether to invest in cutting your own emissions or to buy your way to compliance, and you settle up at the end of each period. It reproduces the real mechanics of an emissions trading system in a form you can actually play.
Why learn carbon trading by playing?
Carbon trading is hard to picture from a description, because the price depends on how every firm reacts at once. Playing makes that visible. You feel the pressure of a compliance deadline, you see why the price rises when allowances get scarce, and you learn the central decision of every carbon market: is it cheaper to cut your emissions or to buy an allowance from someone who already has spare ones. Making that call yourself, and living with the result, builds intuition that a diagram cannot.
What do you do in the game?
- Run a firm with its own emissions, costs, and abatement options.
- Decide whether to abate (cut emissions) or buy allowances, guided by a marginal abatement cost curve.
- Trade with other participants, including AI-driven firms with different strategies.
- Manage a compliance deadline and avoid the penalty for falling short.
- Watch a carbon price form in real time out of everyone's trades.
Who plays it?
Students learning climate policy, professionals preparing for a real carbon market, educators running a class exercise, and anyone curious about how carbon pricing actually works. No finance or trading background is needed.
Is it free?
Yes. Prometheus runs in your browser and is free to play.
Play the carbon trading game →
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free carbon trading game? Yes. Prometheus is a free, browser-based carbon trading game with nothing to download.
Do I need experience to play? No. A simpler learning mode is being built for complete beginners, and the game explains the core decisions as you go.
Can a carbon trading game be used in a classroom? Yes. It works well as a hands-on exercise for teaching how emissions trading and carbon pricing work. For a guided session, email hipromets@gmail.com.
What does the game teach? How a carbon market sets a price, the choice between cutting emissions and buying allowances, and how compliance and scarcity drive the market.