Carbon Calculator

Inspiration

We realized that although a lot of people realize that climate change and carbon emissions are negatively impacting the earth, many are unable to understand and visualize their individual carbon impact.

What it does

The Carbon Calculator is a platform to easily track your personal carbon footprint in three major sources of carbon emissions: electricity consumption, vehicle usage, and food intake.

How we built it

We began with brainstorming concepts on a whiteboard which eventually made its way to our finished project.

Electrical Region Analysis The Electrical grid analysis was based on Egrid data from 2018 that breaks down fuel consumption based on several key regions across the United States of America. Based on this information we were able to calculate the carbon tons produced for each region per kilowatt hours. From this data we were able to generalize carbon for a state to a household by dividing the population per the region by the total carbon tons produced by the region. From there we multiply it by the hours of electricity used.

Food Consumption /*Algorithm for Food Based Production 1) pass in value to select Gen Category of Food: (Proteins, Fruits, Vegetables, Grains, Dairy, Confections, Coffee) -Has the user ate any of these types of food 2)Select the measurement metric 3) enter the corresponding measurement metric 4) convert the metric to kg 5) multiply food type by kg's to give carbon tons */

For Food Production, we found the main food types in each food group that have high carbon emission. Using these foods we coded a page on the website that allows individuals to input the amount of specific foods they consumed on a specific day. The code above will output total carbon tons produced by consumption of food. Because we ran out of time, we weren't able to completely add in the food section into our website. It is included in our mock up!

Vehicle Usage //Algorithm For traditional vehicle carbon production // FUNCTION INCLUDING MANUFACTURING carbonEmission = ((FUEL COEFFICIENT/avgMPG))*(milesDriven)+((720000/1131.64)*cost); Individuals can input their car make and model (which we connected to a car API that searches the database to find the fuel type and average MPG). These inputs will be passed into the function above and will output total carbon tons produced.

Challenges we ran into

We underestimated how difficult it would be to a) complete data analysis on electric vehicle emissions and b) residential electricity carbon emission per person in different regions. Because we ran out of time, we weren't able to completely add in the food section into our website. It is included in our mock up!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of how we were able to divide up the work to ensure we would be able to complete the ideas we had. Our team created a task list and everyone was given specific tasks to work on and deadlines to complete them by.

What we learned

We learned a lot about how carbon emission can differ based on lifestyle habits as well smaller factors such as region. We really enjoyed expanding our knowledge of carbon emissions and we are excited to share what we learned with others!

What's next for Carbon Calculator

As a team, we hope to make Carbon Calculator a common part of people’s lives to increase awareness about personal carbon footprints. In the future, we hope to incorporate more avenues of vehicle types as well as other high emission causing lifestyle choices.