Dakota Stormer was camping with his family in Galveston, Texas, in the summer of 2001 when Tropical Storm Allison made landfall. It was on that trip, at the ripe age of seven, that Stormer decided he wanted to become a meteorologist. With a last name like “Stormer,” the career choice could not have been more perfect.
“After I witnessed the effects of Allison firsthand, I was fascinated by weather patterns and their impact on the environment,” Stormer said. “Meteorology seemed perfect. And, I had the last name to go with the job. What a great combination!”
It wasn’t until Stormer was in high school and discovered his natural aptitude for math that he pivoted his career trajectory from meteorologist to engineer.
Today, Stormer — who graduated from the Cockrell School with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 2017 before going on to earn his master’s degree in energy policy and climate from Johns Hopkins University — works at Shell as a carbon opportunities analyst, leading a grassroots movement to develop more environmentally friendly solutions to energy consumption in addition to running the company he co-founded, Footprint LLC, and volunteering as a political activist.
Footprint — an interactive app that tracks your carbon footprint — was developed when Stormer and his friends realized the benefit of being able to not only quantify an individual’s carbon footprint but to gamify it so users can interact and compete with one another.
Footprint is currently a beta product available online and will soon be available on Google Play and the Apple App Store. Once downloaded, you will be prompted to log your eating, driving, travel, energy and shopping habits, providing a base measurement of your current carbon footprint. From there, you can compare your carbon footprint to that of your friends and colleagues and compete to lower it, using the resources within the app to reduce and offset your footprint.
“Our vision is for Footprint to be a tool used internationally,” Stormer said. “Whether rolled into corporate sustainability programs or school education programs, we want to have a learning package developed that allows people to not only understand their carbon footprint but take steps to reduce it.”
As Footprint gains momentum, Stormer continues to advocate for shifting thought paradigms around climate change, energy consumption and environmental sustainability, particularly in regard to the relationship between the economy and legislation’s push for more sustainable development. Much of the country’s current legislation around environmental policy solutions is not market-friendly, creating a tug-of-war between society’s growing drive to “go green” and the legislature’s desire to encourage capital growth.
“One of the biggest challenges we are facing right now is developing policy solutions for climate change and cleaner energy sources,” Stormer said. “If we could create bipartisan legislation that stabilizes capital growth while also positively shifting consumer behaviors and markets trends, then we can help grow markets more authentically and in a way that doesn’t harm the environment.”
Although climate change is a global issue, we can each take daily steps to reduce our carbon footprint to create a cleaner, more sustainable environment for tomorrow. Stormer believes knowledge is power, and the more an individual knows about how their footprint can affect the large environmental ecosystem, the more they will do to reduce that footprint.
“It’s a lot more than your gasoline usage, which is what most people associate with the term ‘carbon footprint.’ It’s the products we purchase at the grocery store, it’s the clothes we wear, it’s the Amazon item delivered yesterday,” he said. “When you look at your credit card bill and see you’ve spent $200 on Starbucks in a month, you think, ‘Wow, that added up!’ It’s the same concept but with your carbon footprint. Everything you do matters, which also means every positive change you make matters, too.”
