The great minds at Google have created yet another experimental tool and this one is particularly cool. Environmental Insights Explorer is a web application that can provide a variety of rich insights into the carbon emissions of specified urban environments.

Utilising existing Google technology, the app pulls together data from Google Project Sunroof tool (also awesome) which estimates the technical solar potential of buildings and Google Earth imagery to analyse roof space and local weather.

Bringing this data together, EIE can create accurate carbon baselines and allows user create action plans based on localised data. Users can also set mitigation goals to identify reduction opportunities in individual cities, which has a lot of potential for smaller, under-resourced communities looking to reduce emissions.

Environmental Insights Explorer has immense potential to help city planners better understand emissions data and improve policies. Currently, only 5 cities are available in the beta but Melbourne has made the cut. The other cities are Buenos Aires in Argentina, Victoria in Canada and in the United States, Pittsburgh and Mountain View.

Check it out here.