FEATURE STORY

FuelECOnomics: Discover how your car contributes to climate change

June 25, 2012


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Álvaro Molina, finalist in the Apps for Climate competition.

World Bank

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • The Apps for Climate competition awards prizes to the most innovative applications that use World Bank databases.
  • Bolivia’s Álvaro Molina is one of three finalists in Latin America.
  • His FuelECOnomics application enables users to determine the carbon footprint of any car and its link with climate change.

Bolivian Álvaro Molina is one of 14 finalists of the Apps for Climate competition, which awards prizes to the most innovative applications based on World Bank indicators.

He recently launched a company that implements open data and information and communication technology (ICT) projects in the areas of education, development and the environment.

While working on other projects using information from the World Bank’s Open Data portal, he saw the announcement for the competition. In just two months, he created FuelECOnomics, the application that became one of three finalists in Latin America (the others are from Argentina and Colombia).


" FuelECOnomics was created to demonstrate the relationship among carbon emissions, climate change and urban development. Mainly, it enables users to visualize how the use of cars and their gasoline consumption directly affect a country’s total carbon emissions, as well as global climate change. "

Álvaro Molina

Finalist in the Apps for Climate competition

How much carbon dioxide does my car produce?

The website compares more than 45.000 different cars in terms of gasoline consumption and carbon emissions. It also allows users to trace routes to calculate their gasoline consumption and carbon footprint.

Finally, users can review carbon emissions around the world and their relationship with urban growth indicators, information obtained from the World Bank’s Open Data portal.

 “FuelECOnomics was created to demonstrate the relationship among carbon emissions, climate change and urban development. Mainly, it enables users to visualize how the use of cars and their gasoline consumption directly affect a country’s total carbon emissions, as well as global climate change. Choosing a fuel-efficient automobile is not only good for the pocketbook; it is also good for the environment,” Molina said.

Molina is a telecommunications and systems engineer at the Universidad Católica Boliviana in Cochabamba and has worked in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Last year, he returned to Bolivia to work on ICT interventions for development. Currently, he is collaborating on several projects, including the organization of meetings of software programmers, graphic designers and investors to draw up concrete business plans. He is also involved in the creation of a web directory of in-person courses that link instructors with interested students.


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