Footprints/Abstract > Footprints/Projects > Footprints/StepGreen
Footprints is funded by Intel, NSF, and Google
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Leveraging internet scale technologies to help individuals to reduce energy consumption
The average American consumes 12.5 times the energy of the average citizen of Africa or Asia. With approximately 300 million citizens, that adds up to 2 billion metric tons of CO2, or just over a 3rd of the total waste produced across all sectors of the U.S. economy. Of the other two thirds, much is produced as a by product of the process of meeting the needs of individuals. For example, the transportation of food, production of goods, and so on all generates waste. As a result personal choice can have a huge impact on energy consumption and waste production. Thus, a solution to global warming depends on change at the individual level. The impact of individual choice can be seen in the increasing popularity of organic foods, hybrid cars, and other environmentally friendly consumption choices. I
We are creating a grassroots approach to change at an individual level that leverages the million power of the Internet. In particular, we propose to leverage existing social networks present on the Internet to encourage individual change. Our goal is to piggyback on sites that have tens of millions of members and/or are among the top sites in terms of page views per day.