DIGITAL LIFE

National app for counting CO2 emissions reduction tested in the USA

Pedro Gaspar, director of the Future Business Technology core of the Center for Product Development and Engineering (CEiiA) and one of the researchers responsible for creating the application, told Lusa that despite "not being able to reveal who the partners are" the launch of an 'Ayr' pilot in New York "represents a lot" for the engineering center based in Matosinhos.
The app for smartphones, which will soon be available for iOS (Apple) and Android operating systems, will start operating in June in Matosinhos and Cascais.
According to the researcher, it was after "several conversations" with local decision makers during the Smart Cities New York conference held on May 10 in New York that it was decided to test the use of 'Ayr' in the main north- American.
The application, which began to be developed about two years ago, came from a "challenge" proposed by the United Nations related to the decarbonisation of cities and the reduction of CO2 emissions and aims to "help the user to make sustainable decisions in their "by quantifying the savings each user makes of CO2 emissions," valuing this savings "by creating a digital currency ('Ayr') and 'transacting this value' into the account of each user.
By choosing, for example, whether to use electric or public transports, you are "contributing to CO2 savings" and this savings, as explained by Pedro Gaspar to Lusa, is "quantified in the 'Ayr' portfolio."
"Our application works just like a digital wallet to save the 'Ayr'. We do not need to know information about the user," he said, adding that this information is obtained through the "mobility partners" that integrate the platform.
"If the user is using a certain mobility operator that is inside the 'Ayr' system, that information arrives at us and we quantify it, reaching it to the user's wallet," he said.
The "coins" obtained by the user can be used "in products that help to reduce the environmental impact," said the researcher, adding, however, that this "depends on the strategy used in each city."
"The platform is designed from the bottom up, that is, from the person. This will only work if we can reach the person and can effectively be useful in the context of the person's life," concluded Pedro Gaspar. Lusa Agency