Climate Change and Power Automate Connectors

Climate Change and Power Automate Connectors

Recently, 35 new connectors for Power Automate (you read that number right) were added and we’ve been scrambling and scouring through them to make the latest drop a little more palatable for you by breaking our reviews into chunks by topic. We’ll be delivering them over the next few days. The first is about climate change.

Five new connectors address varying aspects of climate change with a clear push toward reducing the carbon footprint, assessing air quality and understanding optimum times for energy use. All of them are independently published, and each one has its list of possible actions, but none of these I reviewed contains a single trigger, so how you use the information you get once you have it will be up to you.

Let’s jump right in!

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Airly

The Airly app provides “accurate, hyper-local data about air pollution in your community.” As they say, is knowledge is power and by better understanding air quality, organizations that need details about current air pollution as part of their business processes could benefit from it. The connectors actions include:

  • Get a list of available indexes types along with lists of levels defined per each index type.
  • Get available measurement types along with their names and units.
  • Get single installation metadata by ID.
  • Get measurements for any geographical location (interpolated by averaging measurements from nearby sensors up to 1.5km away from the given point).
  • Get measurements for concrete installation given by InstallationId.
  • Get nearest installations to a given point, sorted by distance to that point.
  • Get nearest measurements for an installation closest to a given location.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Three stars for the connector, and five for making an impact.

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Cloverly

Cloverly’s API determines the amount of carbon emitted using specific data inputs such as package weight, flights or vehicle use impact or transportation destinations. It calculates the impact of common carbon-intensive activities in real time and uses verified, quality carbon offset projects to neutralize them. This connector does the calculating of emissions from a variety of the day-to-day sources that any business creates. More importantly it can calculate neutralizing offsets for you, or allow you to purchase appropriate offsets to neutralize your emissions impact. For large shippers and any businesses in the transportation and logistics field, this connector can inform future decision making that addresses climate change.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Five stars

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CO2 Signal

Simple in design but important in its quest, the CO2 Signal connector can inform when its best to use electricity when your carbon footprint would be the lowest by tapping into hourly info sourced from app.electricitymap.org. It can provide data from more than 50 countries historically, in real time, or as a forecast for the next 24 hours that quantifies the carbon intensity of electricity. This connector lets you get that information from a given zone, country or coordinate.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Five stars

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Ecologi

The Ecologi organization, one that facilitates funding of climate projects and tree planting projects now has a connector (independently published connector by Troy Taylor.) The Ecologi connector’s actions let users track tree planting, the resulting total offset of carbon emissions and the total impact, as well as the ability to request purchase of either trees or carbon offsets.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Four stars for the connector and five for coming at climate change through tech.

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Open NEM

The Open NEM connector for Power Automate is the first I’ve seen where in the documentation from Microsoft a creator identifies himself right in the description, “My (Paul’s) intent is to demonstrate the value the Power Platform as a key enabler of the energy transition,” and its the second of his creations in this climate change realm. (He’s also responsible for the CO2 Signal connector.)

This one while formidable, only applies to Australia. It’s slew of actions designed to make public Australian Electricity Market (NEM) data more accessible to a wider audience shows energy consumption in real time.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Three stars for the connector due to its continental limitation but five for giving the Australian public an important tool.

If you’re looking for connectors that can move us all forward, the ones that address climate change may just be the most important ones of the 637 available now. Look here for more or CONTACT US to help you get started with your next project.

Kimberly Kratz
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Kimberly is a Virtual Assistant but real person who works on the team at Reenhanced. She’s also a professional writer and editor. When she’s not painting a portrait or dreaming up her next steampunk quest, she works as a Reference Librarian in the city.
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