Welcome to Collective.Energy

We are a community of individuals striving to work together for a better future.
 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. What is this?

Collective.Energy is an attempt to solve the problem of not knowing what you can do personally to fight climate change. It is an online community that empowers members towards positive climate action.
 

2. What will Collective.Energy do for me?

By joining our community, you will get several benefits (PS it's free):

• Get the inspiration, ideas, feedback, and support you've been needing to have a big impact
• Build a following for your project
• Learn best practices from more experienced doers
• Receive a platform to grow your profile in the sustainability community
• Obtain feedback early and often to guide you
• Raise the funding you need
• Connect you with like-minded people everywhere around the world
• Keep you motivated every step of the way
• Stay up to date on new developments relating to climate action
   

3. Why make this?

It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the gravity of the climate crisis. We realized that there was power in the collective. That our total energy could be really effective if only there was a place to bring it together. That place is here.
 

4. What should I do first?

Step 1. Make an account
Step 2. Read through some threads that you find interesting
Step 3. Get involved. Comment on an ongoing discussion. Think you have nothing to say? Start a new thread and ask for advice on what you can do. Big actions start with small actions today
 

Thank you for caring. Let's build something special.

@Jon-Bannon Solutions to climate change will need to come through a variety of forms, dialogue, and open ended problem solving. Excited to have you here!

I come from a technology background and I'm always trying to think of ways to use my knowledge to have a positive climate impact. I think many others might be curious to learn what's out there.

What tech based approaches have you seen that motivated/inspired you?

This is a big point of contention I have as well. @briparks I agree, the concept of "eco-friendly" airlines is a total misnomer. Realistically, what might be required is for consumers to collectively put pressure on international aviation administrations and more importantly - to put a bigger price on the carbon associated with each flight ticket. Pricing in externalities can work!

@Jorgen-Hookham are you only looking for ready-to-consume carbon offset APIs? When I'm looking for APIs, I usually refer to ProgrammableWeb

There's also a number of groups doing carbon offset as a service without ready-made APIs. For example:

• https://www.climateseed.com/ - Find trustworthy projects to offset your carbon emissions
• https://www.atmosfair.de/ - German non-profit with CO2 mitigation services
• https://www.terrapass.com/ - Buy carbon offsets & RE credits
• https://nori.com/ - Carbon removal marketplace launching soon

Would love to learn more about what you're trying to do!

Did some digging around and it looks like this article is pretty spot on. As someone who usually washes dishes by hand, consider me convinced. Low hanging fruit right here awesome contribution @jamiroquai

@Jacara WOW this is an absolutely astounding level of detail! Big kudos to you for the extremely detailed responses. You're definitely making a positive impact here.

To me, it would be wasteful to throw away these clothes or products, so I wear them, donate, or give to a friend.

Totally agree. In fact, I think material minimalism is one of the best life approaches you could take. Our society constantly pushes people to consume more... more clothes, more gadgets, more everything. In order to get to a global state that is sustainable, we need to collectively reduce our addiction to consumerism.

this lifestyle has opened my eyes to a plethora of cuisines that I probably never would have experienced

Reading this made me think about how it seems like many people are reluctant to cut meat because they're unsure of what meals to make. What are some of your go to meals?

I am more than happy to provide sources for these stats. I initially was actually going to insert all of my sources before but didn't want people to feel that my post was becoming academic.

Valid concern. These are great sources though and I think giving us the ability to dive deeper would inspire others to do their own research. I wonder if there's a middle ground here - maybe it would be valuable to start a new thread as a place to start collecting solid sources for the community to access? What do you think?

we vote for things with our dollar

100%. I've been feeling more and more that we have to use capitalism itself to fight climate change since conventional approaches aren't working fast enough. I wrote a piece about it in the context of renewable energy here if you're interested

Hi friends. I wrote another new post - this one is about how we can use capitalism to help the planet. I'm really curious about what you think of this one.

The New Economics of Saving the World

Paradoxically, the way to help create solutions to the climate crisis is the same way we got into this mess - by following the money. Most people realize that we all need to create impactful solutions to the urgent environmental situation. An obvious reason why this isn’t the case already is... click to continue

Thanks as always for your support
-E

@rikard structural change is a great topic of focus. My initial thinking is that the power of the collective would be quite effective at presenting a unified face towards structural problems. I also think that these challenges need to be highly focused in order to be effective. Maybe it would helpful to target very specific changes that can be attacked in tandem. Where would you start?

@briparks Thanks for sharing. We need to celebrate the small victories, getting such a powerful international body to recognize this is a step in the right direction. Progress is iterative!

@ldeddens upvoted! Congrats on the launch.

Perhaps you can tell the community here a bit more about what Climeworks does and how they do it?

@petrk thanks for sharing the WebCarbon Calculator. This is something we all grapple with as the web is a critical part of life in 2020. It clearly does good as well, bringing together communities of people towards action (like here!)

I'm curious, relative to other emission-causing activities - how does the average browsing session compare? My natural tendency would be to assume that it is a pretty marginal effect but I've never crunched the numbers on it!

@Sid-Sahni welcome to the community. Could you perhaps explain more about this? Is it your business?

Thanks for sharing @harry0123

Sustainable city planning is a critical aspect of future development for society. What do you think makes Freiburg's model work so well? Government incentives? Engaged citizens? Progressive laws?

@Cameron-Brown awesome initiative!

These kinds of virtual events really help to keep the momentum going around climate solutions. Love the action bias

@Sandeep-Patil this sounds like an interesting but fairly specific idea so I doubt that there would be any robust research out there for it. As with any new idea, the economics will decide their fate. It seems like any advantages gained through platooning on rails might not warrant what would likely be a large cost. If there was a way to figure out how to do it at scale cheaply, that would surely drive progress

@Simon-Shepard have your thoughts or plans progressed on the STES front? I thought this was a really interesting idea and would love to follow any pilot projects that might be happening

@Eddy-Chiang very cool. How did you manage to convince the automakers to give you their used batteries? I'm guessing it wasn't as easy as just calling them up and asking

Hey @Eddy-Chiang! Thanks for sharing, Moment Energy looks awesome.

From a technical perspective, how are the EV batteries able to have their life cycle extended? Is it just that the batteries are being thrown away before their useful life is complete? Or is there some electrical engineering that goes into it?

@TomRand I believe they already have contracts in place with private sector companies like Shopify and Gitlab to drive those companies' carbon capture initiatives.

From press releases, I see they've raised over $4M in funding from some fairly prominent VCs like Chris Sacca, Paul Graham, etc

Perhaps founder @dsaezgil can weigh in on their short term strategy?