Open CO2

This is a proposal (at first) within a UK context where suitable data appears to exist.

What's the problem?
Although a range of CO2 emissions data appears to exist, the information on the whole tends to be held by government or quasi government institutions. This can lead to, or be perceived to lead to problems with reuse of information for the benefit of society and communities. The data is barely visible. Few people probably are aware of its existence in spite of widespread concern about climate change. Government at all levels, but especially local government, can be risk-averse in putting out information which they perceive to be influential on their image.

What's the proposal?

 * A website with information and data available on ordinary web pages (not spreadsheet docs, or PDFs) by location. The website will enable people to see the whole picture from the personal, through local and national to international data in a clear and consistent way.
 * Website to include open forum for discussing contentious issues such as the fair and equitable allocation of emissions, and to enable the enrichment of this discussion with the wisdom of crowds
 * To seek to provide whatever may increase the options of ensuring all the data is available for reuse
 * To provide a framework within which citizens could make sense of the myriad of personal carbon footprint calculators on offer. The proposal is not about any sort of compulsion for all citizens to track their emissions, but just to provide a meaningful framework for those that wish to take responsibility for their carbon footprint.
 * To preserve trust in the independence and impartiality of the site, and to prevent manipulation by government or any sectional or vested interests, it should be run by a civil society group or network

How would this help?

 * The data would be more visible
 * Greater transparency and accountability
 * If reuse was facilitated, anyone would be free to use the data in creative and innovative ways to the benefit of both local communities and wider society.
 * It would encourage local communities to take more responsibility for their own carbon emissions
 * it would facilitate Participatory carbon budgeting
 * it would enable citizens to have more confidence in using personal carbon foot print calculators and to be able to relate their personal results to local community data
 * it would enable communities and wider society to discuss potentially contentious issues such as the carbon footprint of commuting
 * some local councils thanks to initiatives such as the Nottingham Declaration on Climate Change have laudable and challenging CO2 reduction targets. Linking target information with readily available baseline information would enable councils to get more credit for their own initiatives.

Fundamental Open Rights
Arguments made on behalf of Open Data include:


 * "Data belong to the human race". Typical examples are genomes, data on organisms, medical science, environmental data.
 * Public money was used to fund the work and so it should be universally available.
 * It was created by or at a government institution (this is common in US National Laboratories and government agencies)
 * Facts cannot legally be copyrighted.
 * Sponsors of research do not get full value unless the resulting data are freely available
 * Restrictions on data re-use create an anticommons
 * Data are required for the smooth process of running communal human activities (map data, public institutions)
 * In scientific research, the rate of discovery is accelerated by better access to data.

Data from non-governmental sources
International

Tweak 1 - Focusing on the positive
In addition to the above the project could, depending on available data, focus on more positive aspects of transition to low carbon communities. This might include for example declines in emissions since 2005, local and renewable energy sources, etc.

Tweak 2 - a better name and model?
"Where does our co2 come from?" Aiming to do for carbon accounts what Where Does My Money Go? does for financial accounting, but with a particular emphasis on carbon accounts for local communities. So the aim would be to promote transparency and citizen engagement through the analysis and visualisation of information about UK's national and local carbon footprint.

This proposal is intended to meet the aims of apps for sustainability, but of course is in need of collaborative development.

See separate article Open CO2 video

Related topics
UK Government statistics
 * UK National Statistics and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs publish statistics relating to CO2 emissions. As of March 2009, CO2 emissions data is available for local authority areas for 2006 and 2005.


 * The National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory website lists 2006 1x1 km CO2 emissions data by Local Authority as being available.


 * Climate change and energy - indicators, Defra

External links
 * Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network, climate data
 * Mash the State
 * we20.org/plans
 * "Free our data" (The Guardian, technology section)
 * showusabetterway.com - as of March 2009 does not appear to be current
 * diycity.org
 * MySociety
 * Debategraph, editable wiki debate visualization tool, includes a climate change (debate) map
 * Sandbag, using the power of the internet to open the issue of emissions trading up to public scrutiny
 * City Climate Catalogue, Copenhagen world catalogue of city commitments to combat climate change

References