UP team global champion of international eco-contest

MANILA, Philippines–After literally and figuratively weathering the storm, a team of students from the University of the Philippines Diliman has become global champion in the first-ever Shell Eco-marathon’s Pitch the Future research contest.

Alamat UP’s “Team CERO” won the “Tracking and Reducing CO2 (carbon dioxide) Emissions from Vehicles with Microsoft” part of the eco-competition during a virtual awarding ceremony around 11 p.m. Thursday (Manila time).

This marks the first time a Philippine team became the winner in the global finals in the history of Shell Eco-marathon.

Team CERO is composed of nine students from interdisciplinary fields — business administration and accounting, chemical engineering and mechanical engineering.

They are Matthew Solomon Arjonillo; Esther Pauline Bacay; John Cagape; Paolo Ricco Gauma; Althea Patricia Laza; FuLin Li; Aleandro Sta. Ana; Jan Goran Tomacruz; and Marc Adrian Yu.

In an online interview on Friday, Team CERO said that at the onset of the competition, they were very nervous as they were vying for the championship at the most competitive among the four categories in the virtual tilt.

“But after it was announced that we were the grand winners, our doubts were gone. We were extremely happy that we made the Philippines and our university proud,” said Tomacruz, one of the team members.

“It was a very momentous feeling for us, especially that we made it while we were busy chasing deadlines for requirements for the semester and we were all still recovering from the natural disasters that beset us. It was a ray of hope in a dark period of time,” he shared.

The UP team bested the much bigger teams from University of Alberta in Canada and TED University in Turkey, which were winners of the Americas and Europe regions.

As global champion, the team received $1,500. They also received $750 for being the winners of Asia/Middle East during the regionals’ awarding in November.

 Eco-driving

Pitch the Future is an all-new virtual program that was integrated in the annual Shell Eco-marathon, which gathers student teams from around the world to use their STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) to tackle real-word energy challenges — decarbonising the home, tracking and reducing CO2 emissions from vehicles, decarbonising road freight transport, and electric vehicles and long-distance travels.

Greenhouse gases, such as CO2, trap heat and make the planet warmer. According to a report by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the largest source of CO2 emissions  from human activities is from burning fossil fuels for transportation use.

Throughout the competition which started in September, the students have designed a mobile app named CERO (CO2 Emission Reduction Operation), which helps track and reduce CO2 emissions from passenger vehicles.

The app aims to act as a platform for its users to monitor their fuel consumption and reduce it by implementing eco-driving best practices.

For the Filipino

Asked on what they think was their advantage over the two other finalists, the team noted that CERO was built on the idea of “inclusiveness,” with the ordinary Filipino in their mind using the app.

The scientific consensus, according to the studies pored over by the team, is for countries to completely shift to electric vehicles and mass transport systems, and completely ban fuel-powered vehicles for a long-term solution in significantly reducing CO2 emissions.

“But these studies are limited to wealthy developed countries. Our app provides a short-term to medium-term measure to mitigate CO2 emissions while developing countries, including the Philippines, are still unable to shift to electric vehicles,” Gauma explained.

While all of three of their studies aim to change driving behavior, their competitors use technology such as high-tech sensors which could be difficult to procure by ordinary drivers.

“Your everyday taxi, jeepney or Grab driver cannot afford additional sensors. Even if we say that each of the sensors is just P100 to P200, it is still a big amount to take away from them. That’s why our app will just utilize smartphones, a ready device which they can take out from their pockets,” Gauma said.

CERO features real-time eco-driving notification, after-trip analysis and fuel consumption wallet for budgeting.

It also has optimal route mapping capabilities, which can be likened on how navigation apps like Waze and Google Maps are used. But instead of providing the driving route to get to a destination in the least amount of time, CERO will give the route where the least amount of fuel will be consumed.

The app also has an incentive feature, encouraging drivers to practice eco-driving through the app by showing fuel savings, coupons and promos that are available from partner organisations or sponsors.

Win for all

“Based on our preliminary research. a lot of people want to eco-drive, but the problem is that they do not know what they should do, or what counts as eco-driving,” said Li, another member of the nine-man Team CERO.

With the use of the CERO app, the team sees a decrease of average monthly fuel expenses from P1,750 to P7,250, and prevents unnecessary CO2 emissions by 15 percent.

The CO2 emission count could also be collected and be used as a guide for environmental policy making.

“The main benefit of this app is to bring change in driving behavior,” team member Laza noted. “Reduced CO2 emissions are correlated to good driving behavior. It’s a win for all sides.”

“Good driving behavior brings safer roads for the public. The data collected can be used by the government to craft policies. Even if the users are not aware, by using the app, they are still helping the environment,” she added.

Challenges

The team was proud to say that CERO was a product of Filipino minds born in the middle of the most difficult time for its members.

The competition started in mid-September, months into the coronavirus pandemic. Classes for the entire semester were made fully online for the first time.

“It’s very hard to balance our academic load. We are having a hard time absorbing what we are studying during the day, and then allotting the nighttime for the competition,” Tomacruz said.

During their brainstorming phase, they would be on video calls for meetings until 1 a.m. without even a solid conclusion, Laza shared. “We made a lot of changes, we were not confident about what we were doing at first.”

The laggy slow if not intermittent connection in the country also did not help them. Some of the members even needed to go to their neighbor’s house to get a more stable internet connection.

Worse, the day they were submitting the final output for the global championships in end-October was also when Supertyphoon “Rolly” (international name: Goni) first landed in the country, where members were residing.

Laza, who was in their home in Batangas when Rolly in its strongest hit Luzon, was the first to have her power cut while the supertyphoon thrashed everything along its path.

“I was still finishing an essay for the competition. So what I did was to send parts of my work to random friends on Messenger, and ask them to run a word count because we have no electricity,” she shared.

“That night when we were bracing the height of the storm, I was praying that my teammates were alright. Because I can’t really do anything at that point except to check on them. But because of teamwork — as corny as it may sound — we were able to finish it,” Laza said.

After their win, Team CERO members said they aim to pursue more research on the topic.

“We are really interested in this topic. We want to make this idea not just for the sake of the competition, but to really help people,” Tomacruz said. “We hope that with this win, we are able to gain more people and organizations to support our idea.”

CFC