But no mainstream navigation service has yet mastered the holy grail of environmentally conscious travel – the route of least emissions. Researchers at a handful of universities across the country are at work on this concept, called green routing. The idea sounds pretty straight-forward: Instead of selecting the shortest route to the grocery store, you would be able to pick the path with the smallest carbon footprint. Researchers suspect that on the aggregate, if large numbers of us were adjusting our driving patterns like this every day, it would have a serious impact. A recent study from researchers at SUNY-Buffalo found that rerouting just a fifth of drivers in a computer simulation of traffic in the Buffalo area could reduce regional auto emissions by 20 percent.
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