Pledge4Future is a project to help working groups measure and reduce their work-related CO2e-footprint. By calculating the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to electricity and heating consumption, as well as the ones related commuting and business trips, it is possible to visualize GHG emissions. By using the tool iteratively, it will be possible to reduce emissions in research groups.
Climate Positive Energy Student Advisory Member and graduate student Guillermo Lozano Onrubia is among the researchers and students behind the tool.
“In October 2020 some of us, working as researchers or student assistants at the geography department of Heidelberg University, formed an internal sustainability group,” states the team on the Pledge4Future website. “In order to create synergies we joined forces with Scientists4Future (S4F)Heidelberg. As we were concerned by a paper by Jahnke et al. (2020) showing that CO2e-footprints per researcher can be three times higher than the German climate target for 2030, we handed in a project idea to measure and reduce CO2e-emissions for working groups at the The Climate Challenge Hackathon of S4F Heidelberg and Goethe Institute – Pledge4Future was born. We were one of the winners of the hackathon, got funded by Goethe Institute, and since then, we voluntarily developed our tool.”
The Pledge4Future team is interested in expanding and are looking for an undergraduate/graduate student to further support the web development, and a supervisor to also support the project through beta-testing.
Fore more information and to apply, contact: guillermo.lozanoonrubia@mail.utoronto.ca.