With the help of Forum One, the Center for Global Development (CGD) launched a web-based initiative aiming to reduce global carbon emissions. CGD believes that public disclosure is one of the best steps towards solving a problem, and they came into the CO2 front with some pretty heavy artillery. Kevin Ummel and David Wheeler at CGD worked tremendously hard not only to find and sanity-check the emissions data, but to sculpt it in a way that many will undoubtedly find meaninful. The database itself consists of information for 50,000 power plants and over 4,000 power companies. Google maps have been used to add some flesh to the raw data, and a colored icon is attached to every item to further reinforce the numbers.

What's coolest about CARMA is the ability to "dig" through all the data to find stuff that you'd consider meaningful. The Dig Deeper section allows you to drill down to find plants and companies in your area, as well as the most troublesome (or greenest) ones in your region/country/continent/etc.

Users can download the raw data in CSV or XML formats on just about every page, and if that's not thorough enough, there's a full-featured API. With the API, anyone could pull out data and use it for their own website -- perfect for custom widgets. Examples and helpful tips will shortly be added to the API documentation as well.



Even though we knew from the start that this is a really cool initiative, we had no idea that it would make it to the front page of sites like CNN and NPR. On the day after launch (11/15), the first server buckled under the enormous load, causing a bit of chaos. The site was down for a good 20 minutes while Rackspace upgraded to a new server. However, all is well again, and the steps made towards correcting the problem will be on a follow-up post.