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Economies are often reguarded as being 1 of 3 types, agricultural, manufactoring and services. Agricultural is the least developed and doesn't necessarily mean just farms, it just means the GDP mostly comes from resourse harvesting whether it be food, mined ores or drilled oils and gases. Though in this game, it definately means farms. Quickly manufactoring means mostly product refinement and services mostly expertise exporting from mainly office skyscrapers. At this stage, you have three leading options. They are Coal, Oil and Wind.
-Coal is the obvious economic choice by far, 3rd cheapest to build at 10K, second cheapest to run normally at 250 per month and by far the cheapest to run per Megawatt, what more is there to be said other than it obviously has the big negative downside of extreme pollution?
-Wind turbines are the most expensive generators to run per Megawatt, the total opposite of coal. However, power demand in agricultural towns is generally VERY low, meaning bigger generators have to cut funding drastically to where they're far less cost effective just to be in concideration.
In fact, upto 800 MW/H (4 wind turbines equivalent), wind is the 3rd cheapest to run per Megawatt, only behind coal and oil, the heaviest polluters while wind itself produces none. I've found in the past 2 wind turbines to be more than enough to meet the power demands of an agricultural town, never mind 4!!! But the key word is agricultural, build any industry and power demand will soar!
-Oil is the 2nd cheapest to run per Megawatt after coal, even at this low scale. And, surprisingly, these screenshots show how given enough space, the air pollution produced by them can be near neutralized within a dense enough forest, though there's still the water pollution to deal with after: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1444811598 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1444812087 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1444812437 However, oil's 17,000 inital construction cost hurdle is a steep one to clear. When compared to the earlier example of 4 wind turbines costing 1,000 upfront, 200 a month and generating 800 MW/H, oil takes 22 years to repay the extra inital investment with the 62(744) per month(year) savings: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1444839895 And remember how even 4 wind turbines equivalent is likely overdoing it, meaning it would take even longer at smaller scales where the absolute savings are even less. Then there's the factor of life expectancy where wind turbines are king, often able to last twice as long as coal or oil. Personally, I wouldn't recommend oil at this stage. But, technically, it does have it's place as the middle ground option between coal and wind if you really want to go for it.
-Gas is one I'd like to give an honorary mention, for although at 4 wind turbines equvilent (or less) it's more expensive as shown below, if you intend to start lightly industrializing in the near future... https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1423074433 Then natural gas becomes a good investment for the future as gas generates low air pollution as is but none if surrounded by dense forest! Gas is equally low on the water pollution side as well and will start leaving wind turbines behind economically as it reclaims it's spot as 3rd cheapest in MW/H at 5 wind turbines equvilent and above.
I put in brackets "heavy" because this section is meant for if you're laying large industrial zones, densely pact instead of in small pockets surrounded by forest to contain air pollution generated. Such city planning would suggest you probably don't care all that much about the enviroment, though you still will likely want to keep your industry separated from the rest of your city by a belt of forest or maybe a river to keep richer residents happy and willing to stay. Space is at a premium... so it's certainly understandable if you resort to this eventually in an industrial city. Moving on.
-Coal again works well for the reasons stated above, but now even better! As you'd be able to run at max efficiency as well as possibly afford to deal with the water pollution if you wanted to.
-Oil again works well, even better than during the previous stage, just like coal to maybe an even higher degree. But oil still produces around half the air pollution as coal and the same is true for water pollution. So if you're not going to actively try to neutralize said air pollution due to running out of space or whatever your reasoning, I don't much see the point of paying more than twice as much for oil over coal when the main benefit is the pollution reduction. Here's some pollution data: It's very untrustworthy lol! So, definately take it with a grain of salt. Now besides the immediate reduction in pollution, oil has another slight advantage over coal, space efficiency. By that I mean oil generates more power per ingame tile (437 MW/H) than coal (375 MW/H) which can also help with pollution reduction as it doesn't eat as much into the belt of forest you should have shielding the rest of your city from it's industry's pollution. But this space efficiency increase is so minimial that it only really comes into play in truly huge industrial cities with populations like 200K sims.
-Nuclear once unlocked is the far better option than oil if you want space efficient power with the goal of reducing pollution, though it is mighty expensive despite being the cheapest of the fully clean power sources. Slowing your economy down by switching to oil when it still generates quite high levels of pollution certainly doesn't seem smart to me. Stick with coal, use the extra income to keep investing in your economy until you can truly afford to go green with Nuclear I say.
-Hydrogen is basically just a better version of Nuclear with the exception of per Megawatt costs! Twice as space efficient (hydrogen 2,000 MW/H vs nuclear 1,000 MW/H) for less than 7% extra running costs (hydrogen 10K vs nuclear 9,375 @ hypothectical 50K MW/H) and no melt down risk! If you have the demand to justify it, seems like a no brainer. A hidden downside both nuclear and hydrogen share is short life expectancy, don't expect to get much more than 30 years out of either before you'd best replace them due to aging.
Should your city's population grow into the 6 figure range, you'll encounter the increasingly hard problem of finding the space required to keep unemployment at bay in a manufactoring economy. At the same time, there's a good chance your sims are living in increasingly vertical locations and so it's time their places of employment followed this trend. A.k.a. commercial office to the rescue! Yes, I know, not commercial services... short: CS = local services and CO = international services. Commercial is far less polluting, well, as far as air and water goes anyway, maybe not in terms of garbage however, IDK. Point is, this is the time to go green with your power generation as the rest of the city does while de-industrializing. Space also shouldn't be as much of a premium since well, now your city is expanding vertically instead of horizontally! This part will also cover light industry.
-Gas is great if you've got space, for as mentioned before, the little air pollution it produces can be neutralized completely by building it within a forest! This while still costing 1/3rd less per Megawatt than solar or hydrogen! Although, gas isn't space efficient, 3rd worst in the catagory. Especially... when also taking into account the forests you need around each one and you'll need many indeed. For weakness #2 is low output, 2nd lowest at 3,000 MW/H, followed lastly by slight water pollution at #3 which will require the additional cost of a water treatment plant to deal with of course. Overall, a great option to go with if space isn't a concern. I'd say gas = best option for light industrial city.
-Solar is completely clean with no melt down risk and has the 2nd longest life expectancy, however, it's also the 2nd least space efficient (only ahead of wind turbines) and quite expensive sadly also. Though it's no more expensive than the other green options, matching hydrogen for 1, meaning, it's lack of space efficiency is the main drawback of note. So once again, if you've got the space, it's a good option. It should be noted that a wind farm of 3,000 MW/H is about the limit of wind's economic viability before solar starts leaving it behind. Now perhaps this should go without saying, but I suggest you don't just delete your windfarm once it reaches that size, just stop funding it and slowly turn it back online once needed.
-Nuclear and Hydrogen also work for reasons stated previously, so, yeah, I guess that's a wrap! Or... would be if I didn't feel compelled to talk about Nuclear's cost a bit more, for it seems to high. Nuclear is the 4th most popular fuel source in real life, producing 10% of all power generated, down from 13% a decade ago (largely due to Germany and Japan shutting their nuclear plants down after 2011's Fukushima disaster). Here's a report showing generation in the past 33 years: https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy/electricity.html Seems like nuclear's more expensive than it should be in the game if it's that popular in real life. Still, if you want to play realistically, nuclear remains the cheapest green option in the game just like it's the (2nd) most popular green option in real life (after hydro-electric dams which aren't in the game sadly). Hydrogen is future tech, so don't build it if you wanna be realistic.