Private Carbons

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  Private Carbons in action!

Inspiration

The globe's richest 1% are responsible for more than double the carbon emissions of the poorest 50% of the population link. We decided that the most tangible example is private jets: when have you ever used a private jet for quick cross-country journey?

What it does

We don't believe in shaming people, but in encouraging them to change for the better! That's why our project focuses on tracking carbon emissions of private jets and suggesting a way to offset the climate impact via donations to carbon offsetting charities. We don't want to sound self-righteous; we want to bring awareness to climate change and tangible ways in which we can affect it.

How we built it

As our whole idea relies on private jets, we first had to source our data on the distances that they travel. We then estimate the carbon emissions of such flight, visualise that for greater impact and Tweet at the owners via the Twitter API.

Challenges we ran into

Our main challenges were interacting with the Twitter API and sourcing our data. As students at a hackathon, we were not able to use developer API accounts, and so were very limited in the operations that we could perform. However, through teamwork and determination, we worked around these issues and were able to fully implement all of our planned features.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're particularly proud of connecting various data sources, combining them and publishing our to Twitter. With limited time, we were able to find solutions to various problems that popped up along the way and never gave up!

What we learned

Obtaining a reliable data source in a format that you can easily process is really hard! Furthermore, we learned that we can not always assume that there will be an easily available API ready for us to use, and that you have to get creative sometimes to get the data that you need.

What's next for @PrivateCarbons

We want to get engaged with the flight tracking community and expose our code as an API call for them to integrate in their platforms. We believe that climate change will only become an even more pressing issues in the coming years, and the earlier we start, the earlier we can achieve carbon neutrality. Furthermore, we are considering extending our solution to other carbon-intensive industries (data permitting!)

Built With

• python
• tweepy
• twitter