{ "$schema": "../../schemas/model.schema.json", "schema_version": "1.0.0", "id": "EDC-M-0001", "title": "Proposed service-constraint model", "status": "proposed_uncalibrated", "created": "2026-09-10", "provenance": "New qualitative model created at the user's request after the original model was not supplied. Not a reconstruction or an empirical result.", "purpose": "Generate bounded comparisons and questions about displaced burdens.", "limitations": [ "No fitted weights, causal identification, intervention estimates or centrality ranking.", "Edge directions are conditional hypotheses; feedback timing is unspecified.", "Context sources do not validate an edge or quantify its effect.", "The diagram shows candidate relationships, not completeness or global importance." ], "nodes": [ { "id": "density", "label": "Storage density", "definition": "Usable energy per mass or volume of the installed storage system.", "question": "Does the storage system’s weight or size limit the outcome?" }, { "id": "efficiency", "label": "Energy efficiency", "definition": "A service of declared quality from a unit of input energy.", "question": "Could better efficiency or a different way of meeting the need help more?" }, { "id": "delivery", "label": "Infrastructure", "definition": "Generation, networks, charging, storage and maintenance.", "question": "Is delivery or reliability a bigger limit than storage?" }, { "id": "cost", "label": "Cost and access", "definition": "Who can afford and obtain the required service.", "question": "What prevents people from affording or obtaining the service?" }, { "id": "service", "label": "Useful outcomes", "definition": "Mobility, heat, food production, industrial output and computation.", "question": "What must be delivered, for whom, and to what standard?" }, { "id": "compute", "label": "Research computing", "definition": "More task-qualified computational work for research.", "question": "Does more computing lead to useful, reproducible research?" }, { "id": "demand", "label": "Total demand", "definition": "The total amount of service consumed, not just intensity.", "question": "How much extra use is caused by lower costs, and how much by other factors?" }, { "id": "burdens", "label": "Costs and harms", "definition": "Materials, water, land, emissions, waste heat and safety.", "question": "Which costs or harms increase, where, and for whom?" } ], "edges": [ { "id": "EDC-L-0001", "source": "density", "target": "service", "effect": "positive", "status": "hypothesis", "strength": null, "assumption": "Mass or volume is a binding constraint; installed-system overhead does not erase the gain.", "discriminating_test": "Compare delivered service at fixed system mass or volume and duty cycle.", "context_sources": [ "EDC-S-0001" ], "effect_evidence": [] }, { "id": "EDC-L-0002", "source": "density", "target": "cost", "effect": "ambiguous", "status": "hypothesis", "strength": null, "assumption": "Changes in materials, manufacturing and lifetime can outweigh storage gains.", "discriminating_test": "Compare full lifecycle costs at identical service and reliability.", "context_sources": [], "effect_evidence": [] }, { "id": "EDC-L-0003", "source": "density", "target": "burdens", "effect": "ambiguous", "status": "hypothesis", "strength": null, "assumption": "A denser chemistry or carrier changes extraction, containment and end-of-life burdens.", "discriminating_test": "Publish a comparative lifecycle inventory with material quantities and uncertainty.", "context_sources": [], "effect_evidence": [] }, { "id": "EDC-L-0004", "source": "efficiency", "target": "cost", "effect": "conditional_negative", "status": "hypothesis", "strength": null, "assumption": "Operating energy costs matter and savings are not fully offset by capital or maintenance.", "discriminating_test": "Compare total costs using a declared duty cycle and lifetime.", "context_sources": [], "effect_evidence": [] }, { "id": "EDC-L-0005", "source": "efficiency", "target": "burdens", "effect": "conditional_negative", "status": "hypothesis", "strength": null, "assumption": "The same service is delivered and manufacturing overhead does not erase operating savings.", "discriminating_test": "Compare whole-system totals across lifecycle and demand scenarios.", "context_sources": [], "effect_evidence": [] }, { "id": "EDC-L-0006", "source": "delivery", "target": "service", "effect": "positive", "status": "hypothesis", "strength": null, "assumption": "Delivery or availability constrains the service.", "discriminating_test": "Compare outage, queue or curtailment data before and after an intervention.", "context_sources": [], "effect_evidence": [] }, { "id": "EDC-L-0007", "source": "delivery", "target": "burdens", "effect": "ambiguous", "status": "hypothesis", "strength": null, "assumption": "Infrastructure adds embodied impacts but can reduce other losses.", "discriminating_test": "Include construction, replacement and displaced equipment in the inventory.", "context_sources": [], "effect_evidence": [] }, { "id": "EDC-L-0008", "source": "cost", "target": "demand", "effect": "conditional_negative", "status": "hypothesis", "strength": null, "assumption": "The cost variable is service price and demand responds to it.", "discriminating_test": "Estimate a price response using a credible counterfactual; separate unrelated growth.", "context_sources": [], "effect_evidence": [] }, { "id": "EDC-L-0009", "source": "demand", "target": "burdens", "effect": "conditional_positive", "status": "hypothesis", "strength": null, "assumption": "Marginal service has nonzero resource requirements.", "discriminating_test": "Measure aggregate consumption and marginal supply effects.", "context_sources": [], "effect_evidence": [] }, { "id": "EDC-L-0010", "source": "cost", "target": "compute", "effect": "conditional_negative", "status": "hypothesis", "strength": null, "assumption": "Energy costs materially constrain research compute and capacity can expand.", "discriminating_test": "Compare energy share of compute cost and actual capacity constraints.", "context_sources": [], "effect_evidence": [] }, { "id": "EDC-L-0011", "source": "compute", "target": "efficiency", "effect": "ambiguous", "status": "hypothesis", "strength": null, "assumption": "Additional research compute may produce valid, deployable improvements.", "discriminating_test": "Compare independently validated research yield per total resource cost.", "context_sources": [], "effect_evidence": [] }, { "id": "EDC-L-0012", "source": "compute", "target": "density", "effect": "ambiguous", "status": "hypothesis", "strength": null, "assumption": "Extra search produces replicable, manufacturable storage improvements.", "discriminating_test": "Audit discoveries against prior art and independent physical tests.", "context_sources": [], "effect_evidence": [] }, { "id": "EDC-L-0013", "source": "service", "target": "demand", "effect": "ambiguous", "status": "hypothesis", "strength": null, "assumption": "Changes in service quality, access and substitution alter total use.", "discriminating_test": "Track uptake, displaced services, quality and absolute consumption.", "context_sources": [], "effect_evidence": [] } ], "sector_questions": { "climate": "Do lifecycle emissions fall in total and per service?", "transportation": "Does storage mass, volume, power, refuelling, infrastructure or demand bind?", "agriculture": "Does useful energy constrain food output after water, land and nutrients?", "computation": "Does energy constrain quality-qualified tasks after hardware and latency?", "industrial production": "What temperature, uptime and process change is required?", "finance": "Do capital access or financing terms dominate lifecycle economics?", "supply chains": "Which materials, manufacturers and transport routes constrain scale?", "geopolitics": "Does supplier concentration or dependence increase?", "infrastructure": "What must be built, maintained and replaced, and by when?" } }