Highlighting Software Engineer Nicolas Tonne
It’s not so important if you make a big or small impact on the world. Just by doing something, thinking about it and talking about it, you are enabling others to make a difference as well.
Nicolas Tonne is a software engineer that is part of a climate hive at VG Lab, an accelerator arm of VG, a news organization in Oslo, Norway. Right now he is developing an electric vehicle charging app that will make it easier to be a driver and make long trips easier for people new to electric vehicles.
What has motivated you to proactively take climate action at the place you work?
I felt like doing work that affected the world on a bigger scale. But thinking on a global scale is hard, so I started with trying to improve the electric vehicle market in Norway. It’s easier to do things one step at a time.
How did you start? What things did you do in your effort?
Having the Hive work I’ve been doing in the back of my head I thought of ways to direct our efforts in a sustainable direction, even if ever so slightly. I was pretty shocked when I learned about the difference in CO2 pollution of a gas vehicle vs electric, it’s like 160kg CO2 on a 400km trip.
Could we promote chargers delivering sustainable energy in some way? Tweak our algorithms? Give users the option to filter out non-sustainable sources? I think these things will not only create awareness around differences in energy source sustainability, but also make an actual difference in pollution.
How did your company and office react?
All of the ideas are work in progress, and after getting the basic app functionality up and running we will look into how these tweaks could work. When we have amassed a significant user base we can also try out larger experiments. Of course, when making a product it is the long term profitability that is the focus of a company. But it feels like anything that helps the environment is starting to resonate or integrate with the giant creature that is capitalism — at least thats my hope.
What were the outcomes? Were there any changes?
It might be too early to tell, but I think that in time the app will make more people choose electric vehicles more often. When it comes to choosing sustainable it is not always easy to get accurate data or any data at all. Its hard work — but by putting it on the agenda and setting time aside for exploring sustainability in what we do we’re inching closer to better world. And that’s important.
Illustration by Zhi Wang
What is your advice to someone starting out?
If you have a feeling you could or should be doing something, just go with it.
And, it’s not so important if you make a big or small impact on the world. Just by doing something, thinking about it and talking about it, you are enabling others to make a difference as well.
What would you like to see happen in the coming years- what is your wish list for climate action?
A big one would be a shift in the mentality of people and governments across the world, to re-think how we do things, anything, with sustainability and the future of the world in mind.
I’m convinced we will be forced to do so eventually, but it would be nice to get there without killing off half the earth and its life before we get there!
And apart from that, more electric vehicles :)
. . .
Nicolas Tonne is currently developing the Zapp electric vehicle app. His other work can be found at Nixo.no. He can also be found at LinkedIn and reached on the Hive ambassador slack channel.
. . .
This article was first published on the Hive Initiative Medium account.