People could soon be able to monitor their carbon emissions on popular social networking website Facebook.
The energy-conscious application is the brainchild of University of York student Derek Foster. The Computer Science student designed the WattsUp application as part of his Masters degree.
The application, which can be added to a Facebook profile, records live household energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions and adds them to an archive. The emissions are recorded using a special energy monitor – the WATTSON monitor.
Foster said: “With so many people using Facebook now, it seemed like a novel approach to incorporate other elements of our lifestyle, such as our household energy consumption, into our online social profiles.
“By using Facebook as the delivery platform it introduces social psychology elements such as peer pressure and normative behaviour between friends, which can bring in competitiveness to reduce energy usage.”
The application was selected as a novel application finalist by the developers of the Microsoft Facebook Development Toolkit – the program that allows users to design their own Facebook applications.
Household energy accounts for 30 percent of the UK’s total energy use and Foster believes the application can reduce usage in the home, saving the user money and having a positive impact on the climate.
WattsUp will join other green Facebook applications such as ‘Green My Ride’, which offers carbon credits to the greenest car user and (lil) Green Patch, which has used sponsors donations to save 183,244,167 sq ft of the rainforest so far.
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