Carnegie’s Oil-Climate Index web tool is now live
I’ve been working for the past couple of years with Deborah Gordon of Carnegie, Adam Brandt of Stanford, and Joule Bergeson of the University of Calgary, on open source data and tools to assess the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of different oils, summarizing them in our Oil-Climate Index (OCI). Total GHG emissions, when you correctly analyze how oil is extracted, how it’s processed, how it’s transported, and how it’s used, vary by a surprising amount. The highest emissions oil in our initial sample of thirty global oils has 80% higher emissions than the lowest emissions oil, and that surprising variation is big enough to matter.
Carnegie has just released the online web tool for the OCI, so you can explore the data. It’s beautifully designed, and the web developers did a terrific job. There are also mobile versions. We’ll keep the tool updated as we expand the OCI to more oils. We expect to have 20 more oils analyzed by the end of this summer.
Please let us know what you think!
