Grasp: A Plugin to convert a software's carbon emission into easier to "grasp" values

### Prize category

Beyond Carbon

### Overview

Inspiration comes from websitecarbon.com's overview page after a test. Here they are giving the user some comparison values that are easier to understand.

**Input**: Either the total carbon emissions (gram of CO2eq) or the carbon emissions per unit of work (gram of CO2eq) + a number of realistic units over a time range (maybe year?)

**Output**: A Set of interesting comparison values. Some ideas:
* Cups of coffee
* Km / Miles a regular car could drive till it emits the amount of carbon
* Amount of trees that would be necessary to absorb that carbon
* Social cost / damages in $
* ...

### Questions to be answered

* What else could be an interesting value to make the impact of a piece of software more "graspable"?
* Do you see any other obstacles for the idea or things I need to research?

### Have you got a project team yet?

Yes and we aren't recruiting

### Project team

@hoernschen
@tr1ng0

### Terms of Participation

- [X] I agree to the hackathon [Rules & Terms](https://github.com/Green-Software-Foundation/hack/wiki/Rules-and-Terms) and [Code of Conduct](https://github.com/Green-Software-Foundation/hack/wiki/Code-of-Conduct)

# Project Submission

## Summary

The plugin provides insights and metrics for better understanding the software’s implications and “hidden” costs.

* **Impact**: Focuses on socioeconomic effects of carbon emissions, based on the applications activity.
* Social Cost of Carbon (SCC): Quantifies economic costs of CO2 emissions, currently paid by society.
* Premature Deaths and Displacements: Highlights implications of climate change on human lifes and inhabitable areas.
* **Comparison**: Offers comparative carbon emission metrics for various products and actions.
* Lifecycle Emissions: Assesses carbon footprint of bananas, chocolate, coffee, based on life cycle assessments.
* Transportation Emissions: Compares greenhouse gas emissions per passenger km for different transport modes.

## Problems

We are recognizing the difficulty in grasping and understanding the measured data for evaluating application activity. Is a ton of carbon emissions a good or bad value? Why should we aim at reducing emissions while at the same time the impact of our activites on society is not very clear, even if we know the amount of emissions? We believe there is a lack of insights that translates these emissions into tangible metrics and the direct implications on human health and displacement due to climate change.

## Application

Our solution, translates input of carbon emissions data into actionable insights by providing a detailed analysis of their broader implications. It employs metrics such as the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), and quantifies the effects of emissions on human health and displacement, offering a multifaceted view of the impact of software activities. By converting abstract emission figures into relatable, concrete metrics, the plugin aids users in comprehending and evaluating the environmental and social footprint of their software, enabling informed decisions towards sustainability.
More details can be found in the [Wiki](https://github.com/hoernschen/grasp/wiki)

## Judging criteria

### Overall Impact
By providing insights into different socioeconomics aspects such as the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), and the health and displacement effects of climate change, our plugin offers a comprehensive view of environmental impact, encouraging more sustainable decision-making beyond just carbon metrics.

### Educational Value
Our model help people to better understand what the carbon emissions of their software compare to and what impact it can have on society

## Video
https://youtu.be/BAu1d-xsXGY

## Artefacts
https://github.com/hoernschen/grasp

## Usage
https://github.com/hoernschen/grasp

## Process
The solution was developed based on the IF Plugin template. We split the development in the two categories: comparison and impact. Both did their own research on the topic which was the most time intensive part of the work.
After completing the research phase, it was then poured into the documentation and code, with a strong focus on transparency and encouraging others in the future to contribute more data or metrics to the plugin.
During the development phase we made the decision to split the model into separate plugins to give the users more freedom which numbers they are interested in and to not inflate the pipeline output.

## Inspiration
Initial inspiration came from the summary page of [websitecarbon.com](https://websitecarbon.com). Here the user gets below the estimated carbon emissions of one website load a number of comparison values which we found it a very fun way of making the carbon emission metric more understandable.
But these values missed something from an evaluation perspective, therefore we added more values based on impact on society. This comes from the principle of internalization of externalities, a way of incorporating a completely neglected cost factor of business activities. Therefore a second inspiration came from the principle of sustainable accounting, of which a carbon tax is a part of.
Additionally, Asim gave inspiration regarding the impact on physical health due to carbon emission when registering this plugin.

## Challenges
Finding the right literature for the metrics was very challenging. The IPCC already labeled them with "high confidence" regarding impact of climate change and therefore carbon emissions but much research was focused on identifying the impact, but not making it quantifiable to an specific amount of carbon. Often research also focussed on a very small part of a bigger system which made it difficult to really make generalized assumptions from it.

## Accomplishments: Share what you are most proud of
We believe, enabling decision makers on understanding the implications and "graspable" values of applications activities is a major step towards reduction. Therefore we are really proud of connecting measured data with metrics, backed by scientific evidence, to enable evaluation of ICT activity.

## Learnings: Share what you learned while hacking
- It is very difficult to find trustworthy, open and especially general research on a topic
- The research often has good proofs of connections between action and carbon emission but often lacks the concrete value of impact.

## What's next?: How will your solution contribute long term to the Impact Framework eco-system
We believe, that measuring alone is sometimes not enough and requires understanding of the implications. Therefore this plugin tries to enable decision makers to better evaluate and increase transparency for the activities implications on the global society.
We want to keep updating and extending our set of metrics to make it a valuable tool for explaining the impact of a software's carbon emissions and the value of reducing it.