MyCarbon on the Margin– A public web tool to highlight actionable changes to reduce the carbon emissions caused by individuals’ utility electricity consumption.
Charlie Huizenga, Research Specialist
Center for Environmental Design Research
Closed. This professor is continuing with Fall 2024 apprentices on this project; no new apprentices needed for Spring 2025.
The aim of the project is to develop a web-interactive tool that converts a user’s 15-minute data (i.e. Green Button Data upload or API request) into actual grid carbon emissions (i.e. using Watttime’s API). The tool will have data visualizations that display user’s electricity data and carbon emissions. The tool would request additional information from the user such as housing characteristics, major appliances in their home, and typical resident behavior to make practical suggestions to reduce their own carbon emissions.
Role: Perform a bibliographic study / literature review summarizing the topic of electricity grid carbon emissions including how they are modelled/predicted and why they vary.
Develop a web-tool that will take in green button data in a csv format and calculate the resulting electricity carbon emissions.
Integrate additional user inputs into web-tool such as housing characteristics, major appliances in home, and typical resident behavior to expand capabilities of webtool.
Develop visualization techniques to engage users into understanding their carbon emission impact and recommend ways to reduce it.
Document the above tasks for inclusion in the final report.
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Carlos Duarte, Staff Researcher
Hours: to be negotiated
Engineering, Design & Technologies