EnerTrack

EnerTrack is a non-profit carbon tracking system and database, designed for corporations to aid them in reducing their carbon footprint and help them find cleaner alternatives.

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Inspiration

Our inspiration for EnerTrack came from a social issue that our group believed to be incredibly prevalent in today's society - global warming and climate change. We wanted to create a web-app that not only benefits the well-being of our environment through the promotion of low greenhouse gas emissions, but also benefits corporations by reducing their carbon tax rates. We believe that companies are currently facing significant political scrutiny in the face of rising fossil fuel consumption, and as a result, the government is increasing carbon tax rates on their annual metrics in hopes of reducing them. With 2019 being the hottest year in recorded history, we wanted to help alleviate the social tension surrounding this critical issue. After exploring the scientific, political and social implications of this topic, and researching the market, we created EnerTrack.

What it does

EnerTrack is a web-app designed to simplify, track and project the carbon consumption of corporations with large carbon footprints. In 4 simple steps, our web-app will analyze your company’s objectives, track your consumption and footprint, calculate your estimated carbon tax and social costs, and match you with more eco-friendly and cost-effective alternatives using our database.

How we built it

Our stack for this project comprised of ReactJS, ExpressJS and MongoDB. We built the front-end with React, utilizing multiple libraries like Bootstrap. React sent requests to our back-end, which was created with ExpressJS. Express handled all our requests to and from our front-end and also communicating with our database. Our database was created with MongoDB. MongoDb provided a simple way to install and implement a database.

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest obstacle throughout this process was the manner in which we wanted to pursue this venture. Originally, we planned to monetize this idea by charging companies to utilize our web-app. After critically analyzing the idea, we decided it was not feasible nor realistic for our newly-established start-up to assume corporations to be willing to pay for our service. Given the collective passion we had for this issue, we decided to alter our model and adopt a social enterprise model instead. This set us back and was unplanned, however was a critical part in our experience and brought our attention to details which we had not considered, and ultimately gave our group the opportunity to work together to overcome this challenge.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

An aspect of our development process that we are particularly proud of, was our ability to merge our diverse academic and professional backgrounds together. By taking into consideration the wide range of talents amongst us, we were able to bring unique ideologies and skills to the table and approach our topic not only from a technical standpoint, but also a political and business viewpoint. Having stem and non-stem members of our team, allowed us to learn from each other, strengthening our business model and understanding different implications of our idea.

What we learned

During this process, we learned about the various aspects that must be considered when developing a start-up. From finance, to operations, to marketing, to risk management, there are numerous areas that must work together to run a successful business. This experience gave us the chance to really experience these different avenues and apply our knowledge and skillset's towards EnerTrack.

What's next for Enactus

We want to pursue our venture in order to apply our entrepreneurial idea to the real world, in hopes of benefiting others and tackling a social and political issue that is incredibly important to people all over the world. By developing EnerTrack, we are able to execute our plan of bridging together politics, business and technology in order to tackle carbon consumption and rising greenhouse gas emissions. Given Enactus' goal of benefiting society and creating a better world, we want to continue working with the Enactus community in order to implement real change and pursue our venture.

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