Transcript Firefox Environmental Sustainability Toolkit

Firefox Environmental
Sustainability Toolkit
SURF-IT 2008 Final Presentation
Andrew Zaldivar
Mentor: Professor Bill Tomlinson
Energy Consumption
• 2007 Annual Energy
Review
• 102 Quadrillion Btu of
energy consumed
• Outpacing domestic
production
• 29% of consumption
came from energy
consumed
Energy Consumption by Sectors
• 40% consumed by
industry and
transportation
• 30% consumed by
homes and businesses
each
Carbon Emissions
• Roughly 40% of carbon emissions come from
residential and commercial sectors (not
including portions of transportation sectors
used by residential sectors)
• 2.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2)
created due to consumption of energy from
residential and commercial sectors
• CO2: greenhouse gas responsible for climate
change
Problem Domain
• 71% of adults in the US said that they are
“doing anything to reduce [their] carbon
footprint” (N=1000)
– Energy consumption continues to grow
• Must reduce greenhouse gas production
• Avert impact of global change
• How do we approach this problem?
Energy Conservation
• “What we need are options to achieve that
growth while, at the same time lessening, our
dependence on fossil fuels and increasing our
use of cleaner, more secure sources of
energy.” – Department of Energy Secretary
Samuel Bodman, speech at Harvard Business
School Global Leadership Forum (06/22/2006)
• Energy can be conserved at the individual
level
Individual Level
• In terms of computing
– “…making abstract environmental data concrete
for everyday life.”
– Explored usage of social networking websites
(e.g., MySpace, Friendster, Yahoo 360!)
– Integrated ecological footprint data into popular
social networking sites
– Allowed users to compare their footprint amongst
their social network
J.C. Mankoff et al., Environmental sustainability and interaction, Ext. Abstract CHI 2007 ACM, 2007, pp. 2121-2124.
J.C. Mankoff et al., “Leveraging Social Networks To Motivate Individuals to Reduce their Ecological Footprints,” Proceedings of the 40th Annual
Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Computer Society, 2007.
The Internet
• Design of technology affects lifestyles and
decisions in people
• The Internet: numerous interactions that may
have huge influence in people
• Many developers/enthusiast created projects
and built systems and databases on the
Internet to address environmental issues
Related Work
• Knowmore.org
• Alerts users of the
social and
environmental impact
of companies via alert
messages and icons
• Politically-socially
intrigue
Related Work (cont.)
• BadBuster
• Generates an
environmental score to
products and
companies based on
public information
• Measures
environmental
friendliness
Firefox Environmental Sustainability
Toolkit
• FEST
• Connects online services (Amazon.com, Google
Maps, Albertsons, Cars.com) to environmental
databases (TravelMatters.org, EPEAT.net)
• Pornpat Nikamanon & Matt Meng-Pin Yang
• Works in Firefox web browser
• Implemented in Greasemonkey
• First time anyone assembled many different
environmental data mash-ups
Implementation & Framework
Online Services with FEST
Limitations
• Platform
– Greasemonkey only modifies HTML-pages and Firefox-only
– Online service shifting to Java, Silverlight, Flash, and Flex
– Solution: Investigate other platform that allow client side
modification for other frameworks
• Ethics
– Site owners may not appreciate their web page being
modified
– Solution: contact web service
• Technical
– No official way of updating all its users of any new versions
– Solution: develop at the extension level
Future Work
• Evaluation
– System & Interface
– Comprehensiveness
– Usefulness
– Impact
• Web presence
– A site describing the project, where to download
necessary files, and a list of ideas for other online
services.
Conclusion
• Problem: energy consumption increasing; global climate
change as result
• Solution: reduce energy consumption -> reduce
greenhouse gas -> ward off climate change ->
sustainability
• How: individual level via the Internet as the medium
• FEST: system and framework that integrates
environmental information from databases onto online
services
• Goal: suspect that FEST can effectively play huge role in
addressing environmental issues.
Acknowledgments
• I would like to thank:
– UCI Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship
in Information Technology (SURF-IT) 2008
– California Institute for Telecommunications and
Information Technology (Calit2)
– Members of the Social Code Group
– Pornpat Nikamanon & Matt Meng-Pin Yang
– Mentor: Professor Bill Tomlinson
References
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Energy Information Administration (EIA) - Annual Energy Review.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/.
Polling Report. (2008). Environment. Retrieved August 22, 2008, from
http://www.pollingreport.com/enviro.htm.
Department of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, speech at Harvard Business
School Global Leadership Forum (June 22, 2009).
http://www.energy.gov/news/3771.htm.
J.C. Mankoff et al., Environmental sustainability and interaction, Ext. Abstract CHI
2007 ACM, 2007, pp. 2121-2124.
J.C. Mankoff et al., “Leveraging Social Networks To Motivate Individuals to Reduce
their Ecological Footprints,” Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International
Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Computer Society, 2007.
Greasemonkey. http://www.greasespot.net/.
Knowmore.org. http://www.knowmore.org/.
BadBuster. http://badbuster.com/.
Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/.
Google Maps. http://maps.google.com/.
Questions?
SURF-IT 2008 Final Presentation
Andrew Zaldivar
Mentor: Professor Bill Tomlinson