Tool Feature: Klima
A tool for carbon footprint, carbon offsets, and commumity
Hello everyday environmentalists! Another tool feature this week - and another mobile app-based tool to track and take action against your carbon footprint. Please sound off in the comments if you like these kinds of features, and as always, share with a friend if you found this valuable.
Tool Overview
Klima is a mobile-first tool that helps empower individuals to reduce their carbon footprint. It does this through offering both carbon offsets and suggestions to change day-to-day habits, with a sleek design and some personalization to these suggestions. How much can it help? Let's take a closer look…
Some of what you'll see as you get started (Source: Klima app)
Some of the key features here include:
Carbon Footprint Estimation: The Klima app allows users to estimate their carbon footprint and track changes over time to it. By providing inputs on behaviors such as transportation and energy usage, the app calculates and provides insights into the user's carbon emissions. This feature helps users understand their environmental impact and motivates them to make changes.
Carbon Offsets: To help reduce footprint, the Klima app allows users to directly contribute to certified carbon offset projects. Users can support initiatives that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as reforestation or renewable energy projects. While offsets are far from perfect as we know, I appreciated the many options for offset projects aligned to different causes.
A range of offset project choices (Source: Klima app)
Personalized Sustainability Goals & Suggestions: After subscribing to monthly offsets, users can set personalized targets to reduce their carbon footprint. The app offers practical tips and suggestions to help users make climate-friendly choices in their everyday lives.
Community and Social Impact: Klima fosters a sense of community through a platform for users to share their achievements, exchange ideas, and inspire others. This social aspect of the app aims to encourage collaboration and empower individuals to reduce their respective footprints.
What I Liked
Klima keeps it simple and doesn't seem to try to do too much. They concisely estimate your footprint, they offer offsets and recommendations tailored to the user, and they help track progress against your carbon footprint. Avoiding complexity helps to smooth the friction.
It’s a beautifully designed app! I give a ton of credit to the team that built this app - it's easy to use, and just looks good. It's a fantastic example of influencing behavior change by making it attractive.
Showing clearly in the app how your actions are helping to reduce your footprint helps to visualize progress - while I think other apps we’ve reviewed are slightly better at this.
What Could Be Better
Like Commons, which we reviewed a few weeks ago, carbon offsets are central to Klima. In fact, it appears offsets are central to Klima’s business model. I understand offsets are one of the more tangible actions one can take today to neutralize carbon footprint (not to mention straightforward to monetize), but offsets are imperfect and are not a substitute for real action to reduce emissions-generating activity. I'll plan on a deep dive into offsets for a future post. That said, I appreciate Klima’s detailed documentation on the types of projects they pursue for offsets and how they use trusted third parties to verify.
As much as the app design works to reduce friction, there is one major friction point - you can't access much of the app’s features until you subscribe to monthly carbon offsets. I understand offsets pay for Klima’s operational costs, but this is a major downside that I'm sure turns away many users.
You can't access many features until you put a card down. Sigh. (Source: Klima app)
Bottom Line
The Klima app is a well-designed app with features that can help users reduce and offset their respective carbon footprints. However, I would really like to see Klima find a way to reduce its dependency on carbon offsets - they're imperfect, and some of the other features you can't access until subscribing to offsets can honestly help users adopt more climate-friendly day-to-day habits. Overall, worth a download if you're willing to pay up for the offsets, but you can find reasonable alternatives without a required monthly subscription.