Free cake for cutting carbon

A city in Finland offers free cake slices to encourage residents to reduce their carbon emissions.

App users get a weekly carbon quota and if they come under it they get virtual money for bus tickets, swimming pool access – and cake.

“You can earn up to two euros (a week) if your travel emissions are really low,” project research manager Ville Uusitalo says, according to The Optimist Daily. “But this autumn, we intend to increase the price tenfold.”

Lahti has more than 120,000 residents, each producing the equivalent of 21kg of CO2 weekly on average, Uusitalo estimates, with the app urging them to reduce that by a quarter.

About 2000 residents have so far downloaded the app which has also been used during the COVID-19 pandemic to learn how mobility (50% decrease) and transport (public transport use decrease) have changed.

CitiCAP’s developers hope similar tools in the future will help people manage their consumption-related emissions.

Meanwhile, The Optimist Daily also reports that a virtual power plant (VPP) is set to avoid California blackouts.

German energy company Sonnen believes VPPs can solve the situation by linking to solar panels and batteries and it wants to hook up 3000 Californian apartments across seven complexes in one of the largest VPPs of its kind.

The first California VVP by Sonnen will be at a 417-unit apartment complex in Fresno where a system of solar panels and batteries will work independently of the grid. It will also make solar energy and storage more affordable.

The solar energy comes with a rented unit the way a refrigerator might.

A VPP operates as one asset and if too much energy is produced from the solar panels it can be stored in residents’ batteries with utilities able to draw from them in peak hours.