Collaborative Climate Solutions: Using API Models and Carbon Data for Climate Action

In the last decade, we have seen the rise of APIs, revolutionising the way we build products. APIs have enabled the acceleration of easily embeddable features and tools from third party companies - without them, the digital experiences we have today would not be possible. From ordering online and using social media to catching a train, almost every app and website relies on them.?

At Connect Earth, we have a vision where carbon emissions data and insights will be widely accessible to consumers and businesses.?

So, how do we make that happen? Well, we definitely can’t do it alone. Climate change is a global problem, and it requires building collaborative and cumulative solutions. No software or hardware solution alone will be able to solve it. Luckily, there are several technologies that can facilitate collaboration. API models enable global, simultaneous collaborative efforts, accelerating and enhancing how we as a digitally empowered society approach developing climate solutions. This puts us all on the same team in building solutions together.

The shared data economy and its potential for collaboration

In order to solve the collective challenge we are facing, we need to create widespread, accessible solutions. At Connect Earth, we are proud to share the foundations to build and create carbon modelling tools that provide tangible climate change solutions.?

Our philosophy is that it's better to make tools widely available for everyone to build on rather than to create separate apps and ecosystems which polarise and separate technological developments. Collaboration encourages innovation, and innovation creates climate solutions. We’re all in this together.

“We want to help fuel the shared economy. We don't necessarily want to be the one and only platform. We want to enable everyone else to have these really unique carbon footprinting tools to develop embedded carbon emissions products,” says our Co-Founder and CTO, Nick Carmont .?

To create climate products and understand the impact of purchases, we need a wide range of data to correctly calculate carbon emissions accumulated. The more data is available and shared, the more accurate and transformational these products can become, and the more our founding vision for a future full of carbon products can come to fruition.??

The universal language empowering global solutions?

APIs are a universal language - a faster form of communication enabling democratised access to development tools. APIs have facilitated the speed and ease of communication like never before. Their use empowers entrepreneurs to thrive and disables blockers to test solutions, revolutionising problem solvers.?

This way of working is common in the tech industry, and one which Nick Carmont became inspired by throughout his early career, where the shared work between teams wasn’t enabled through manual messaging in the traditional sense but instead occurred through the new language of API and API documentation.?

In the carbon modelling space, Python is a particularly interesting and exciting example. Most carbon modelling used to be done in Excel sheets, making it extremely difficult to share information between stakeholders outside of the company and with other people that could use these models elsewhere. Even if the carbon modellers, data scientists and software engineers all shared the same spoken language, creating an effective product becomes slow and difficult. Python however is one of the main languages that is widely used within the global carbon modelling space - this vastly increases the opportunity for collaboration to build products that people can thoroughly and effectively use.?

Serving the planet to drive change?

Serverless models make the development of API technologies more appealing than ever before. Running at low costs (and emissions!) they break barriers of entry and enable individuals and businesses of any budget to create solutions without worrying about infrastructure and only paying for what they use - this has been a huge enablement in the API space.?

At Connect Earth, we are determined to make our carbon emissions models and data available to the rest of the world. From this, anybody can build impactful products with embedded carbon insights.

“In our case, you can go to our API docs to learn more about our APIs. You can also go one step ahead and create an account to start calling our API for free. You can learn as much as you want, test it, and develop carbon-related product features in less than 10 minutes,” Nick Carmont explains.?

Whether by a startup, student, climate tech business, or financial company, our models are used and built upon in boundless ways. How do we know that? Because businesses who have integrated our products and APIs contact us and share what they’ve built. We have met visionary product managers, using our endpoints tools and insights to create amazing products that will drive positive impact. Being part of that is rewarding and collaborative on a scale we had never imagined.?

We’ve come a long way, let’s keep going

One of our driving values is following this principle of embodying the shared economy. Of course, at Connect Earth we’re focused on estimating carbon but this approach to utilising and sharing data has great potential. APIs represent how we can tackle many common challenges - from cost to access and information, communication and understanding, APIs break down barriers to generate solutions like never before.

The world at our fingertips is exciting, and it can cultivate real change for the good of people and the planet. We’re proud to be part of it, but we can’t wait to see where this collaboration can take us all in solving the global challenges we all share.?

Access our API Console, build something impactful, and be a catalyst for change.