Freo residents get the chance to be ClimateClever

A locally-developed app that allows households and schools to monitor their energy and water use and carbon emissions will be made available to Fremantle residents at half price.

Last night Fremantle Council agreed to sign up to ClimateClever’s Local Government Partnership program.

The council’s annual membership fee of $850 means schools and households within the City of Fremantle can receive a 50 per cent discount on their own subscription to the ClimateClever app, saving households $15 and schools between $500 to $1500 depending on the number of students.

The app was developed in Fremantle by ClimateClever Founder and CEO Dr Vanessa Rauland and her co-founder Alexander Karan, and is currently being featured in the ABC TV series Fight For Planet A with Craig Reucassel.

Fremantle Mayor Brad Pettitt said the ClimateClever app supports the City’s One Planet commitment to work with the community towards a goal of becoming zero carbon by 2025.

“One of our One Planet commitments is to support the community to access renewable energy and energy efficiency measures and encourage uptake of renewables through education and promotion of new technologies,” Mayor Pettitt said.

“The ClimateClever app is a really useful tool to help people track and then reduce their energy consumption, which not only leads to less carbon emissions but also savings on water and power bills.

“The app is also helpful for the City because our annual subscription to ClimateClever provides us with a report showing aggregated, anonymised emissions data for households and schools participating in the program, including reductions they make over the year.

“That data is really valuable for filling a gap in our One Planet Living reporting relating to the community’s emissions.

“It’s also great for the City to be continuing our support for a fantastic local business.”

Dr Rauland said the ClimateClever app grew from a pilot project run in 2016 and 2017 with the support of the City of Fremantle.

“We initially didn’t have any funding to run our program. Fortunately, the City had a plan to reduce community carbon emissions and they reached out and asked if we would be interested to partner on a pilot.

“The initial pilot a collaboration between Curtin University and the CRC for Low Carbon Living, with the City subsidising six Freo schools to participate.

“We ended up broadening the pilot out and had a total of 15 schools participating from across metropolitan Perth, but it was very much instigated and led by the City. Without their initial support we wouldn’t have been able to get the program off the ground.

“After the success of the two-year pilot, we ended up winning a grant to build the first version of the app and launched ClimateClever nationally in 2018.

“We now have 80 schools participating across Australia and 10 local government partners. Our team has grown to 11 staff, including six full-time and three part-time staff in our Freo office”.

City of Fremantle residents can sign up to a ClimateClever subscription and claim their 50 per cent discount simply by visiting the ClimateClever website and verifying their address.

To see the ClimateClever app in action, you can watch the new ABC TV series 'Fight for Planet A' on ABC iview.