What Will it Take: A card game for navigating the new carbon economy

The traditional carbon economy relies on extracting and combusting fossil fuels, which emits CO2 into the environment. CO2 is a greenhouse gas that traps infrared radiation, warming the lower atmosphere and the Earth's surface. When the atmospheric CO2 concentration rises, it causes a stronger greenhouse effect, leading to increasing global temperatures and cascading environmental effects – extreme weather, melting ice and rising sea levels, ecosystem changes, ocean acidification, and adverse effects on plants, animals, and humans.  

The new carbon economy aims to transition away from fossil fuels and reduce or contain CO2 emissions. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation supports the New Carbon Economy Consortium by funding research and initiatives focused on transitioning to a low-carbon energy system in the U.S. through its Energy and Environment Program. The program invests in projects examining energy electrification, infrastructure resilience, climate change adaptation, net-zero innovations, negative emissions technologies, and the transformation of transportation and mobility systems. 

This year, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation awarded a grant to me and fellow Arizona State University faculty member Alexandrina Agloro, assistant professor at the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, to develop a card game that explores the challenges and opportunities of the new carbon economy. 

A card game that makes the carbon economy more accessible 

The What Will it Take card game is designed to guide teams or individuals through the process of bringing a climate technology from concept to deployment. The card game consists of cards in five categories:

1. Technology: Cards include technologies such as direct air capture, alternative fuel, low-carbon concrete, and natural ecosystem restoration. 
2. Interventions: These cards represent factors that can arise in real life, making it easier or more challenging to deploy the technology. The cards say things like “A new CO2 capture material is available that does not degrade.” Or “The parent of a team member becomes ill and the team member must go on indefinite leave.”
3. Wild cards: Fill in missing variables. 
4. Action cards: Allow teams to choose, gift, redistribute resources, or trade.
5. Variables: Represent parts of the sequence of processing to develop and deploy the technology. They are separated into four categories: 
   • Hard infrastructure: Things like measurement equipment and supply chains.
   • Soft infrastructure: Examples include a skilled workforce or an independent review panel.
   • Governance: Including climate policy, regulation, or business model.
   • Social systems:Things like community acceptance, healthcare, and a functioning economy.

Teams are given three technologies at the beginning of the game, and they use the variable and wild cards to build their sequence. At the end of each round, they draw an intervention card that is incorporated. The team then reports their progress and is given an action card and an intervention card, and the next round begins. The objective of the game is to complete the sequence and successfully deploy the technology. However, that’s not always feasible. Sometimes, the technology may not work for any given reason. With either result, the teams have many opportunities to discuss what happened and how things could have gone differently. 

While the game was designed primarily for experts in the field, we were intentional in our language to ensure that students and families could access and utilize the game. The cards are all self-explanatory, making them informative for both experts and laymen who want to learn more about the new carbon economy. 

This work would not have been possible without the research capabilities at ASU and the support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant. We wanted to include students in the creation of the game, and we couldn’t have done it without the indigenous knowledge of Matthew Ngamurarri Heffernan and the beautiful design work on the cards by Jazzmen Lee-Johnson.

We first introduced the game at the New Carbon Economy meeting over the summer, where people had the opportunity to play. The game is available for anyone online and can be easily printed. We envision teams playing it at conferences or workshops, students playing in the classroom, or curious families playing it around the dinner table. Our hope and goal is to help build stronger awareness and thought processing for everyone, whether they're experts in the field or burgeoning climate enthusiasts. 

Assistant professor Stephanie Arcusa is a climate and earth physical scientist specializing in climate mitigation, carbon accounting, and negative emission technologies. She has a joint appointment between the Thunderbird School of Global Management and the School of Complex Adaptive Systems With a Ph.D. from Northern Arizona University, a master’s from the University of Bern, and a bachelor’s from University College Cork, she has extensive experience in collecting and analyzing large environmental datasets using statistical methods and earth system modeling. Her research focuses on paleoclimate reconstruction, fairness in the climate-energy transition, and developing carbon accounting standards for a circular carbon economy. Dr. Arcusa has published in journals like Climate Policy and Geophysical Research Letters. As a paleoclimatologist, she studies environmental responses to climate change, and her current xwork aims to advance emission reduction strategies at local, city, and higher education levels.