Have you ever checked the weather on your phone or tracked your Friday night pizza on a delivery app? If so, you’re accessing the world at your fingertips through API: Application Programming Interfaces.
APIs are powerful tools that connect the users to a system, where they can retrieve data without dealing with the complexity of the process. It is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other. For example, when you order food at a restaurant, the waiter takes your order to the kitchen and returns with your food without you having to communicate with the chef — this is essentially what an API does.
Beyond ordering takeout, APIs are used to serve a much greater purpose: solving the Climate Crisis.
Cleantech APIs work to advance sustainability, raise environmental awareness and aid climate crisis initiatives. They provide vital data on global carbon emissions, air pollution, and energy savings for us through a system optimizing our data intake.
1. Transportation: Decreasing Carbon Emissions
In 2016, the transportation sector recorded a 27% contribution to the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) in Canada (Government of Canada). Clean tech APIs help shape the future of transportation and how we distribute our resources.
For example, traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) is a great concern for busier cities with several vehicles running and unmoving for long periods. By tracking and translating carbon emissions and impacts of cars and airplanes, we can locate high traffic areas and times, providing alternative eco-friendly solutions.
2. Air Quality: Mapping Global Pollution Levels
Global air quality numbers are generally sent to a giant database, where APIs can track and monitor information, sending back only the data we need for our smaller sustainability goals.
The Breezometer API is a tool that allows users to accessibly understand the air quality database content including geographic positioning and integration for different communities. Like many others, Breezometer has documentation on easily integrating their API into various services and products.
3. Everyday Life: How We Can Contribute
Here in Canada, we have the highest average energy consumption per household. However, a great deal of our power is used on things we don’t need — leaving on lights in empty rooms, heating when no one’s home.
Smart homes aim to optimize our energy usage while still fitting in each type of user’s budget and lifestyle, becoming more efficient with more data.
There are many APIs that can be used to create software that decreases average energy consumption. For example, the Genability APIs give detailed estimates on power consumption and associated costs. Using these APIs, apps and products aiming to decrease household consumption can easily provide targeted information for their users. Essentially, APIs like Genability save companies from reinventing the wheel, allowing them to invest more into UX/UI features rather than high-power data processing and calculations.
Hopefully, more accessible and visualizable data will turn homeowners to smart energy providers.
