John,
some first general thoughts about the carbon footprint module:
If the carbon module is implemented in a "general" drupal website, you will probalby have 3 different group of users:
1) anonymous users: They might have never heard about carbon footprints and would simply like to see how much CO2 a car ride or air plane journey of 500 km produces. But they won't want to really calculate and store their complete footprints.
2) interested users: Registered users who are willing to calculate their footprints but the input for the footprint must be as easy as possible. They can accept that the result is only a rough estimate.
3) technically minded users: as from 2) but these users would ask for more precision in calculation. They will be willing to adjust the carbon sources as exactly as possible to their need.
With your own website you are obviously targeting group 2. (It would be interesting to know, how you are getting these users.) For most websites, I guess you would start with group 1 and a certain percentage of group 1 gets really interested and becomes a member of group 2. In other words: for the "success" of this module, group 1 should be offered something as well.
For anonymous users I suggest to offer a relatively simple CO2 calculator, as you can find many of them on Internet. It could be a page where you choose a carbon source from the list, enter the quantity, hit a "calculate CO2" button and get the result. Most likely, this is very easy for you to implement.
In addition, this page for anonymous users should contain a large field, where admins can add general information about the CO2 problem, a chart about actual emissions, and last but not least links to becoming a member of the above mentioned group 2.
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A different issue: nuclear energy
Unfortunately, the discussion about CO2 seems to ask for nuclear power plants. Many governments (including UK and USA) have proudly announced that nuclear energy is "the" answer to the CO2 problem. I think whoever is concerned about the environment agrees, that this would mean to replace something bad with something even worse. If we only look at CO2 emission, we actually get better in replacing fossil energy with nuclear energy. But that will just create problems in different fields (safety risks, hazardous waste).
So at the end, I believe all boils down to reducing our energy requirement in the first place. Then make sure the remaining energy requirement can be produced from renewable resources. So basically, if we reduce our energy requirement, this will more or less automatically reduce the CO2 emissions, too. A common keyword is the "2000 W society", see e.g. http://www.novatlantis.ch/pdf/leichterleben_eng.pdf
Therefore I suggest to calculate not only the CO2 emission, but also the energy applied (including energy for generating the fuels, etc.). In many cases, this will be a very simple calculation. How do you think about including energy requirement for each carbon stamp?
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Rating of your footprint
I miss something that puts into perspective what my footprint is compared
- to the average person of the world
- to the average person in my country
- to what seems to be an "acceptable" footprint
Maybe it would be enough to simply include a text field after my footprint is displayed where the admin could enter a few words and a link to the page where the comparison takes place. Another possibility would be to display a bar chart including my own footprint. The admin should in the latter case be able to set some reference footprints for display in the comparison bar chart.
Juerg
Comments
carbon footprint & different users
I agree with your analysis about typical users. I had forgotten about anonymous users.
Simple CO2 calculator. Yes, i can do that. But what if users say, great, I have worked out my footprint and i now want to (drupal) register and save that data. Would it be better to save the data as a collection of drupal nodes owned by anonymous which can be attached to a user profile after they have registered (would be a big complication to implement)? The temporary nodes/records unattached could be purged by the cron job.
Need to customize the CO2 calculator with text/graphics etc., understood.
CO2 or energy. This is a really interesting perspective that I am going to pass back to the other CRAG people. Yes, adding energy requirement would be fairly straightforward (if necessary could add it to settings so it can be disabled on some sites). Yes, adding energy column would be fairly straightforward (if necessary could add it to settings so it can be disabled on some sites).
Comparisons with other people and other countries is definitely missing. Not likely to look at that until Jan. Perhaps I can find someone else who wants to work on the graphics and reporting side. The RSA carbon limited site (proprietary CMS) does this in a big way.
Thanks for the great feedback.
No saving for anonymous users
I don't think storing for anonymous users is needed. Most likely it would be sufficient to enable them to calculate a single carbon stamp. Just to give them a feeling how much CO2 is produced when they do this or that. If you have just one carbon stamp available the question of storing it is obsolete.
No idea whether it would be a better strategy to give anonymous users the possibility to fill in a complete carbon footprint. At any rate according to my opinion there is no need to save that footprint or carbon stamp.
Juerg
not saving results of calculator
OK that sounds good.
calculator for anonymous users
Juerg
Given that you don't think the results need to be saved (well at least not initially), I am thinking of adding a calculator page which is basically the same as most of the other web offerings in that the calculations are done immediately using client side javascript (assuming this can be done cleanly under drupal.
So if this is OK, the next question is how should this work? You suggest just 1 carbon stamp. Wow. So, are we saying, pull down list of carbon sources plus an amount field and a result field?
I was thinking of we might need to present a simple group of 4 or so carbon stamps (like the carbon footprint edit screen)? Are you looking for CO2 only or CO2 plus one or two energy fields? Could I use something similar to the carbon footprint edit screen without a submit button but with total fields?
But happy with just 1 carbon stamp.
Whatever is easier to implement
John,
Personally, I would prefer CO2 plus two energy fields. It would be great if you could use something similar to the carbon footprint edit screen without a submit button but with total fields. In my view, this would be better than just 1 carbon stamp, but 1 carbon stamp is better than nothing and certainly very easy to use ;-)
The main purpose should be to get people interested in tracking their footprint. Hopefully others can add good ideas how this could be achieved!
Juerg
Carbon Footprint: more suggestions
The concept of carbon stamps (= single contributions) and carbon footprint (= the sum of all contributions) seems logic to me. However I don't find it intuitive that you have to press "edit footprint" in order to add a new carbon stamp to the footprint.
Once you know it, you can certainly deal with it, but it is not very obvious to me.
So I suggest the following change on the view "my footprint":
- Remove the table "All published carbon stamps"
- In the table "Emissions" show the following columns: Date, Title(*), Source(*), reading, unit, kg of CO2, Power kWh
Make the table sortable by Date or Title or Source or kg CO2 or kWh
Columns denoted with (*) should contain a link to reveal full details (Alternative1: show the details while hovering over with the mouse, Alternative2: Make it as collapsed line and display within the table details of the carbon stamp when a user clicks on the collapsed line)
Would it be possible to add a last column to this table with two action buttons "clone" and "edit"?
edit -> modify the carbon stamp or delete it
clone -> provide a new, similar type of carbon stamp where you can override the date and quantity field (and maybe all other fields if needed)
Underneath the table, there should be an action button "add new entry" or "add carbon stamp" so that you can easily add a different carbon stamp to the footprint. If you allow to modify all fields with "clone" then "add new entry" could be exactly the same form as "clone".
The current way of entering carbon stamps could be left as it is and provide an alterative way.
I haven't look at all at the data model, so I have absolutely no clue whether the above suggestions would be easy or difficult to implement.
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One last thing regarding the carbon sources table: Please provide a field "comments" for this table. In this field, an explanation could be given how the calculations of the CO2 emission and consumed power (kWh) is actually done, maybe links to references, etc. This is important for the transparency and to answer questions like "why is your CO2 emission for a plane trip three times as high than indicated by the calculation in ..."
Juerg
table editing
Agree with you using the the edit pane is not intuitive.
I like the idea of in situ table editing but I don't think this can be done from the the 'view' pane, at least if we want to work like any other drupal module both visually and behind the scenes. It would normally be done under the edit tab. Can add the edit operation. Like the clone operation. Link to add stamps sounds good.
Perhaps we can display all carbon stamps with a limited number of fields (e.g. no start date) in a table while in edit mode and then display just the the carbon footprint (emissions) for each year while in view mode (drop the all published carbon stamps table as you suggest). When user create a footprint, they will see the empty table before they submit.
Carbon source links
It might be to have a node id associated with each carbon source. Instead of (or in addition to) a comments field, you could then have a "more info" link to a page giving the full background behind the source.
Footprints and stamps
I agree with Juerg that there should be a link to "add a carbon stamp" when viewing the footprint. I like the idea of adding stamps to a core footprint, and building up annual footprints on the basis of that data - it fits the user's experience, which is: I have this collection of gas bills here - now how do I turn that into a footprint?
However, if we are going to build up a footprint through stamps, then is it not best to separate off the "footprint" node entirely from adding emissions? i.e. footprint would have overall preferences e.g. about sharing and collating stamps (as you have now), but not any actual emissions sources itself (as you say, footprint has "no data related to energy or CO2."). Emissions could be dealt with entirely by stamps. What do you think?
I also wasn't sure how the fields "my home gas" etc. (in the edit footprint form) fit into the overall scheme of things. Are they stamps? Or an alternative way of building a footprint?
In what situations would someone have more than one footprint? Does a footprint last for a year, or is it a running total?
Sorry - loads of questions!
David
Footprints and stamps
David says 'I have this collection of gas bills here - now how do I turn that into a footprint?'
Just add them as stamps. The calculate functions will choose the correct stamps for calculate the footprint for each year. If you put in stamps for the beginning and end of 2004, the software will generate a footprint for 2004.
David says 'is it not best to separate off the "footprint" node entirely from adding emissions'. Yes it may be but i am worried that it will confuse users. How would you see this working? I think you are saying footprint node is just a bunch of preferences and that we add reporting functions under the carbon path to show specific footprints, At the moment that functionality is (slyly) attached to the viewing of the carbon footprint.
"my home gas" is a carbon stamp. I am adding a lot of text to the top of the edit footprint to explain this. This is the quick way of bulk editing carbon stamps but perhaps it is now superfluous, given that 'edit', 'clone' etc are added to the footprint view.
edit and clone
Have added edit, clone and add operations to the carbon footprint. And i have removed the list of carbon stamps. Sorry no column sorting yet. The changes are running at the my carbon rationing site and will appear in tonight's development build. Thanks for the suggestion, think it is a big improvement.
Still thinking about David's (tonderai's) suggestions.
Schedule available for further features?
John,
I have played around with the last version on your site. I think this module is now much more intuitive to use and easier to understand. Do you have a schedule available when you plan to add further features (and which features)?
For my own site, the "anonymous user feature" would be a relatively high priority, because I've only about 10 registered users compared to about several hundred anonymous users arriving daily via search engines.
Juerg
Advanced functionality
John,
I hope you don't mind when I bomb you again with ideas...
Your data model allows to assign carbon stamps to more than one footprint. This is very flexible but I assume only advanced users will use this feature. Therefore I suggest to hide this functionality from "average users" on a separate page or a separate tab.
I assume that you would first enter a carbon stamp to one footprint. Assigning carbon stamps to additional footprints could then be done in several ways:
a) drag and drop: make a table of carbon stamps and a separate table with footprints. Then drag carbon stamps to footprints. (no idea whether drag and drop is feasible at all)
b) Use two multi-selection lists (similar to the multi-selection list for the taxonomy when you classify normal nodes). The first list should contain all carbon stamps and the second list all footprint. Select the desired assignments and hit the "assign" button. This would allow to do n:m assignments in one single step.
c) Display a list of the carbon stamps with a check box for each carbon stamp. Underneath this list you could place an action button "assign to" together with a selection list (drop down button) to select one (maybe even several) footprints. This would be similar to treating mail in some webmail-systems where you can check one or several mails and then at the bottom you say what you want to do with them.
Juerg
advanced functionality
Users only see the choice of carbon footprints, if they edit the carbon stamp. At the moment, the version in HEAD displays checkboxes showing which footprint that the carbon stamp is attached. I don't think users would have more that 2 or 3 footprints and possibly for family members. If they have only one, the stamp is (now) automatically attached to it. What about putting the checkbox in a collapsed block; it does not seem worth (yet) having a second tab?
Looks like there could be some drag n drop through the Ajax module,
Hiding function is smart
I think it is smart to hide the choice of carbon footprint if there is only one carbon footprint.
I also agree that only very few users will have more than 1 carbon footprint. So it does make sense to give this function for the moment a low priority. (The current version [I am using HEAD from CVS with drupal 4.7.4] gives me an error message when I try to assign a carbon stamp to another carbon footprint. Or do I need to use the HEAD version from drupal 4.7 in order to make it work?)
Hiding attached footprint
OK, I will do that. And in next CVS update and next release.
new release
A new release 4.7.x-0.3 (http://drupal.org/node/104442) takes a small step towards making it easier for registered users that first try the software. You can create a footprint with one submit after clicking on create footprint. The other issues will have to wait until after xmas!
adding graphics
I am looking to embed graphics (bar chart/pie charts) on various pages.
David B suggested adapting Paccala & Soccolow's wedges to the household (see http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003861.html), presenting the most cost-effective solutions.
Juerg points to the Austrian site http://www.energieverbrauchskalkulator.at/ and writes:
"a) As anonymous user, you can compare your energy requirement with the average in 3 different areas: electricity, heating, and warm water. For each of the 3 areas, you get the result as chart.
"b) Registered users can then save one or several addresses and for each address they can fill in a table with yearly consumptions.
I am not sure how much flexibility the drupal admin needs. Would the admin want to specifiy which charts are available where. What colour scheme should be used?
No customization for graphs
John,
As a first reaction, I don't think the admin needs to be able to customize anything regarding graphs. Neither where they do appear nor colours. At least not in the first version...
This would be different if special software was required on the server in order to display the graphs, of course. But even then a simple and general on/off switch for graphs should be sufficient, according to my opinion.
Juerg
Don't see the use of wedges approach for individuals
I've looked into the information about the "wedges" on http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003861.html and several related documents.
For the time being, I can't imagine how that concept could be adapted in a meaningful way for households. The most important effect for households will be "change behavior" and not a strategic selection of technologies. The drupal carbon footprint module will hopefully open the eyes of many people when they see how much they actually are contributing to global warming. For this purpose I believe it is important to compare the personally caused emissions to those which are considered to be max. allowed for a sustainable life style (maybe taken from the 2000-W-community approach or from somewhere else). It could also be healthy to see how much CO2 would be emitted if everybody on the world was emitting the same amount of CO2 as the respective person.
Once a person has adopted the need to act, the question will arise: How can I reduce my carbon footprint. For this purpose a categorisation of the emissions, e.g. in transportation, heating, electricity, (maybe warm water) on the level of carbon stamps does make sense. Maybe there should be subcategories (like for transportation: car, air travels, public tr.). [Could drupal taxonomy be used for this purpose?] This classification would help to identify the area of personal activity with the highest contribution to CO2 emission. A presentation in graphs like pie charts could be very useful for this, too.
A different classification might be renewable/non-renewable energies and fossil / water / nuclear / other non-fossil on the level of carbon sources. But here it gets more complicated because of the electrical energy usually being a mixture of everything. So I suggest to postpone this for a later release.
According to my opinion, this drupal module should in the first release concentrate to be an eye-opener, i.e. to show an individual that there is a need to act and which of his/her personal behaviour does contribute most to global warming.
Juerg
Other suggestions from the issue tracker
These suggestions are brought over from the issue tracker...
I thought some kind of feedback or layman's summary of the results beyond the overall carbon output and the accompanying table would be nice. Even something simple like recommendations to curb carbon to less than 2500 would be great. An example is one of the carbon footprint websites tells you "how many earths" you would need to support your lifestyle! It might be cool to allow this to change over time, or show comparisons (maybe this already does that, and I haven't gotten there yet!)
Thanks
Art
Sorry for downtime
Apologies, I have been away from home for the last couple of weeks. I am going to be releasing the first version with bar and pie charts, hopefully this week. I promise to work through the suggestions, esp display of energy, soon.
Need data for energy calculations
Juerg
I have added a kwh (KillowattHour) field to carbon_source and the total amount is calculated and displayed in the current development version (not yet committed to CVS). I am planning to make the field optional and users will be able to switch on/off both kwh and co2 but the default preferences will be set by admin.
However, where do you think we can get the energy numbers from? Can you give me a URL for a good source or do you want to update carbon.install yourself. I think we really need a new complete carbon source model that has both energy and CO2 but perhaps an energy only model will suffice.
Should we be using Joules instead of KwH?
Any thoughts.
John
Energy units
John,
Most likely I can find and send you the energy values. Could you perhaps send me via email a list or a table, so that I can fill them in?
The energy unit is a tricky one. I displayed on my website some data about energy consumptions by country in "kg of oil equivalents", a unit which is quite often used by the International Energy Agency (IEA) for energy comparisons. However I got complaints that I should have used BTU (British Thermal Units) instead...
The conversion factors for energy can be found on the "Energy Kids Page" from the American Energy Information Administration (EIA) at http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/science/energy_calculator.html
added Jan. 28:
As far as the energy values are concerned, I suggest to distinguish between renewable and non-renewable energy for all sources (2 energy fields for each carbon source).
Juerg
carbon plus energy or two fields or three flexible fields
Juerg
I think there are various options here.
I am not happy about using BTU, they are very old. I have also seen a US web site lists CO2 emissions in lbs. I wish everyone used SI units!
Are your proposing two energy fields as well as CO2 or are you suggesting 2 flexible fields which can be used for CO2 or energy. I think the former.
It sounds like the administrator would need to define the units in admin/settings and the carbon sources would have to have the appropriate multipliers.
John
Agree to base on SI units
John,
I agree with your suggestion to use SI-units. Although I personally prefer Wh, I can certainly live with J (or kJ or MJ). Let's call this „calculation units“ for the energy.
I also like your idea to provide 2 fields where admins can define the label for the „display units“ (e.g. „kgoe“ or „kWh“ or „MJ“) and the respective conversion factor from „calculation units“ into „display units“ of energy. This will then be a very flexible solution.
According to my opinion, there is no need to switch off the display of CO2 emissions. Only the display of the two energy fields might be optional. So you would then end up with 1 field for CO2 and two (optional) fields for renewable and non-renewable energy, respectively.
Juerg
Pie and bar charts
I have queued a development build which should be available tomorrow. It includes crisp and shiny, bar and pie charts. I'll make a production release a few days later. This, I hope, is the last release that contains new functionality for a while.
It does not include two energy fields that Juerg has asked for because I had already added the one energy field and didn't have time to repeat that.
There's still a lot to be done to make input more intuitive and I hope to make changes to the view/edit of the carbon footprint as suggested by Juerg above.
Latest Version?
Hi John,
Jut wondering if the latest version is available for download - the one on the module page seems to be from Jan 22nd.
B-Dot
0.6 release
I have just tagged the existing fileset (which I have previously installed and tested) as the 0.6 production release. This is the same set of files that have been in the overnight development build for the last couple of weeks. Work on this module has been non existent in the last few days but I'm hoping that will change.
Mailing list for carbon footprint calculators
Hi all,
I've set up a new mailing list on Google with the name "carbon footprint calculators" to discuss issues related to the operation and development of carbon footprint calculators (not just for Drupal but including Drupal, of course). This is not to replace but to support the threads on this forum due to the lack of a subscription feature to get notification of new posts.
If you are using the Carbon footprint module, I suggest you join the mailing list. If you have a Google account, you can add yourself at:
http://groups.google.com/group/carbon-footprint-calculators/subscribe
Alternatively, you can send me an email to "jrohrer (at) up-to-date.ch" and I'll be glad to add you manually.
Juerg
First Steps - Carbon Footprint
I would like to thank you and your team for producing this module. Here are some of my impressions.
(1) Anon users and other calculators
I concur that we need to have a simplified anon user calculator.
Samples:
1 http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/carboncalculator/#
2 http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.html
3 http://carbonfund.org/site/pages/calculator/
The user needs to be able to answer a set of questions and receive a simple result. I more robust calculator can be sitting on an 'Advanced Calculator' page behind the simple calculator. 'climatecrisis' (#1) was helpful in that each question can be answered by common knowledge (place you live, number in household) or by looking at your bills. 'carbonfootprint'(#2) was a bit difficult to walk through for many users, but it did have both a British and a US version that changed the units of measure. I would consider this to be 'advanced' for most anon users. 'carbonfund' (#3) is an nice minimalist calculator that again is easy to use and gets a result.
(2) First Impressions
My first impression when I opened the modules calculator was that it was a bit intimidating and that I would have to go through a gathering process (my bills for the year, convert to international units...) to get an answer. When I jump to the multiple sources list, my sense was that most users would not know where to begin. It has lots of choices but it is unclear what is the best direction. I would present a simple calculator, a button (or tab) to a more advanced calculator, and a historical calculator designed to track usage over time. Persist each calculator inside a single data set where the difference between the simple and advanced are only a set of optional (more in depth) data sets. This way a user may decide (at their option) if they wish to store the result over time, or share their results with others. Although this last step may require a log in, a user may opt to obtain a temporary pass (see Site Pass Module) or give their friends a Guest Pass (see Guest Pass Module). The reason for support of anon and possibly temp passes is that carbon footprints are like publishing you weight. It seems like a neat idea for OTHERS to do.
(3) Carbon Budget (ok - this is a bit much)
On the other side of the spectrum (even more complex), I would prefer a spreadsheet that I could fill out on a monthly basis to create a 'Personal Monthly Carbon Budget'. Just like my monthly financial budget, I could track actual versus planned. We could also calculate the amount of Savings ($) that changing consumption habits produces. This would open the possibility for creation of 'Non Carbon Points' (or White Points or Earth Points or Green Stamps...) which represents personal decreases in consumption patterns.
(4) Views
Views Module integration would boost the ability to republish the results . Views Calc module might be used for some simple calculations.
(5) Stamps
Here a new concept is being introduced (simple but powerful). A new user might give up if you introduce this concept since they don't understand the definition of 'carbon stamp'. Here is where extreme simplicity may be the best avenue. The ideas (posted above) of presenting just one or two stamps in a very simple form are great.
(6) Comparisons (this is also a bit out there)
In reviewing the US 2000 Census, I was wondering if this might be mapped onto a Carbon Footprint, so a user may compare themselves to others in their own town (or even block). This might need some more digging on my part.
Samples of the type of data that I have published:
http://fatatlas.com/node/2073567 (Travel and Transportation)
http://fatatlas.com/node/2146343 (See Section: Utilities, Cars and Kitchens)
Right now it still seem that some elements are missing in the census data.
Again, thanks for the module.
James
FatAtlas.com - US Atlas - 2 million places