Effission

Green & Efficiency tracks

Inspiration

We were impressed by the extraordinary efforts made by companies, such as Shell, in taking responsibility for carbon impact and leading the field in corporate social responsibility. We learned about commuter transit passes and the different types of fuels and incentives these corporate leaders are offering in the fight against climate change. Having each worked around Silicon Valley, we also saw tremendous innovation and unique efforts by leaders in all sectors--startups, nonprofits, and policymakers--that needed financial resources easily delivered by existing carbon cap and credit programs.

What it does

Our product, Effission, connects these two parties by making it easy for corporations to track the impact of existing carbon emission mitigation programs. By involving employees in the process of choosing which causes to support, we hope to lay the groundwork for future partnerships and draw attention to an important (if not the most important) problem facing our society today. Finally, we make impact easy by providing a direct interface for carbon credit transfer through a one-click web platform.

How we built it

We engaged in an extended product development phase, first asking company sponsors about their initiatives in the space while trying to understand the current gaps. By prototyping and workshopping a number of solutions and consistently speaking with sponsors, we accrued a huge base of ideas, which we filtered and implemented. While our back-end developers cranked on coding all the features we wanted, we paid special attention into making our pitch and presentation pertinent to prospective users, thinking about things like business models and prospective areas of growth.

Challenges we ran into

• integrating the Smartcar API into our system and plugging in research from the EPA on emissions by individual cars
• Making the voting system run, specifying the causes and ensuring that users could only pick two causes to support

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Using both the Here and Smartcar APIs into a one-click solution
• Creating a solution that involves both company executives and employees
• Going into a space we weren't familiar with and learning from a lot of cool people!

What we learned

• capabilities of the telematics industry and how data can be leveraged within the field
• areas of growth and intersections between technology, policy, and community organizing
• how to make some really sick pool shots

What's next for Effission

• expansion into different verticals--air travel, cargo movements by rail or by train
• expansion into different aspects of carbon emissions--looking at the carbon footprint of energy use, food production, and water procurement

Built With

• android
• here
• http
• node.js
• smartcar