NREL OpenPATH helps you monitor your travel modes while calculating your energy consumption and emissions.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Open Platform for Agile Trip Heuristics (NREL OpenPATH, https://nrel.gov/openpath) allows users to track their transportation modes—such as car, bus, bicycle, and walking—and assess the related energy use and carbon emissions.

With this app, communities can better understand travel habits and preferences, explore options to improve sustainability, and measure the outcomes. These insights support effective transportation policy and planning, helping to create more sustainable and accessible urban environments.

NREL OpenPATH provides individual users with information about the impact of their decisions, while also offering aggregated, community-level statistics on mode share, trip frequency, and carbon footprints through a public dashboard.

NREL OpenPATH combines continuous data collection and analysis using a smartphone app, supported by server infrastructure and automated data processing. Its open architecture ensures transparency in data collection and analysis, with the flexibility to adapt to specific programs or studies.

Upon initial installation, the app does not gather or send data. After clicking a link or scanning a QR code to join a specific program or study, you'll be asked to consent to data collection and storage before the app activates. If you're not part of a partnered community but want to track your personal carbon footprint, you can participate in the NREL-managed open-access study. Your data, when combined with others, could serve as a control group for experiments conducted by our partners.

At its core, the app functions as an automated travel diary, built using location and accelerometer data collected in the background. You can enrich the diary with semantic labels as required by program administrators or researchers.

Continuous GPS usage in the background may significantly reduce battery life. To minimize this, the app automatically disables GPS when you are stationary. This greatly reduces battery consumption from location tracking. Under typical use—up to 3 hours of travel per day—the app results in approximately 5% battery drain.

What's New in the Latest Version 1.9.1

Last updated on Oct 15, 2024

- Push notifications are now optional to accommodate programs that do not require them