Project: Energy Emissions Tracker

Project Motivation:

Jordan Wildish is passionate about mitigating global climate change. To address this urgent need, they believe that we need to be able to track, engage, and advocate for our climate progress in a far more tangible way. Wildish sees a major need for more transparent data to monitor our progress towards mitigating the global climate crisis. They believe that increasing energy transparency in the United States will not only prompt consumer behavior change but will help to hold local decision-makers accountable to climate goals.

Team Members:

Jordan Wildish, Project Lead

Summary:

Meeting our climate commitments requires a significant increase in our use of renewable energy in the United States. Through the EIA's API, coupled with emissions data, we can monitor how power is being generated in the US on a daily scale, at the national, state, and local level.

For the times during the day when power consumption is highest, many utilities will use "peaking plants", which are highly emissions-intensive power plants aimed to meet peak demand. This dashboard will allow customers to directly reduce their carbon footprints by understanding the hours during the day when their power consumption generates the most emissions and adjusting their consumption accordingly. This will also allow utility customers to understand and advocate for clean energy in their area, and provide transparency and accountability to state and municipal emissions targets.

Project Needs:

We see this as the very first element of a larger effort.

We want to:

1) add tools for users to advocate for clean energy policy in their regions

2) integrate hourly data

3) add more localized data

4) generate an API to allow other developers to use this data

5) make substantial design and performance updates

6) integrate science-based climate targets into the tool.

Accomplishing all these next steps will require many more hands on deck. Specifically, support from front and back end developers, policy researchers, and communications and marketing experts would be extremely valuable.

Sustainable Development Goals:

• Affordable and Clean Energy

• Sustainable Cities and Communities

• Climate Action

How Clean Is Your Energy?

We developed a minimum viable product of what we believe to be the first tool to quantify US carbon emissions from energy generation on a daily (and eventually, hourly) basis. The dashboard is viewable here: https://jwildish.shinyapps.io/EnergyEmissionsTracker/

Skills & Resources Needed:

There are four key components that will make this project successful. First, developing the dashboard at a production-ready scale will require web-development support. Second, integrating state, national, global emissions, and climate targets within the dashboard will benefit from support from people with policy analysis skillsets and experience. Third, support from people with skills and experience in advocacy will be critical to developing effective advocacy components. Finally, support from individuals and organizations to reach a large audience with this tool will be highly valuable.

Post-Capsule Goals:

• University Partnership or Collaboration

• Accelerator Program

• Incubator Program

• Entrepreneurial Program

• Hobby Project

• Private Research Program