Carbon footprint calculation

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We have explained below a methodology to calculate a person’s carbon footprint for each emission sector: housing, travel, food, products, and services.  Anyone can use this methodology to calculate his/her footprint.

 Methodology:

There are five major consumption categories such as housing, travel, food, products and services.  In addition to these, we also estimate the share of national emissions over which we have little control, government purchases and capital investment.

Multiply own energy use input with an emissions factor to get your carbon footprint.  All these inputs include the consumption of individuals, things like fuel use, distance, calorie consumption, and expenditure.  Working out your inputs is a matter of estimating them from your home, travel, diet, and spending behavior.

Although working out your inputs can take some investigation on your part the much more the challenging aspect of carbon calculations is estimating the appropriate emissions factor to use in your calculation.  Where possible you want this emissions factor to account for as much of the relevant life cycle as possible.

Housing

To calculate housing footprint we need to work out our share of total home energy use, water use, and waste disposal.  Calculating the individual share is nothing but the dividing total energy by the no of people, By multiplying the owns energy use by its emission factor to get its carbon footprint.

The calculations look like this:

Electricity : use (kWh/yr) * EF (kg CO₂e/kWh) = emissions (kg CO₂e/yr)
Natural Gas : use (therms/yr) * EF (kg CO₂e/therms) = emissions (kg CO₂e/yr)
Fuel Oil: use (litres/yr) * EF (kg CO₂e/litre) = emissions (kg CO₂e/yr)
LPG : use (litres/yr) * EF (kg CO₂e/litre) = emissions (kg CO₂e/yr)
Waste : use (kg/week) * 52 * EF (kg CO₂e/kg) = emissions (kg CO₂e/yr)
Water : use (litres/day) * 365 * EF (kg CO₂e/kWh) = emissions (kg CO₂e/yr)

Each of the usages are per person, per year. 

In all calculations you need to make sure your input is in the correct units, whether that be in terms of functional units or in terms of the time period.  The input and intensity also need to match up, for instance, if you are using therms for natural gas then the intensity should be per therm, not per kWh or per litre.

Electricity

Unlike with other energy sources the carbon intensity of electricity varies greatly depending on how it is produced and transmitted.  For most of us, the electricity we use comes from the grid and is produced from a wide variety of sources.  Although working out the carbon intensity of this mix is difficult, most of the work is generally done for us.

Direct emissions factors are widely published and show the number of emissions produced by power stations in order to produce an average kilowatt-hour within that grid region.  In many carbon footprint calculations organisations simply use this direct emissions factor, which provides a good indication of how carbon-intensive the electricity we use is.  In addition to these direct emissions it is desirable to account for indirect emissions, from things like mining and plant construction as well as transmission losses.

Accounting for direct emissions, indirect emissions, and grid losses give a more complete picture of the full footprint of the electricity we consume.  Using an example is useful to explain.  In the UK the average carbon intensity of electricity use is about 0.6 kg CO₂e/kWh, around 82% of this figure comes directly from combustion, 11% from indirect emissions while 7% is from losses.  In the US the average has been around 0.7 kg CO₂e/kWh over the last decade, but this varies across different grid sections within the country and is dropping with the increased use of shale gas.

A more complete explanation of the different intensities for electricity consumption is contained in the next section, shrink that housing footprint.  This section also has a comparison of the intensities of different generation technologies like coal, natural gas, wind, and solar.

Fuels

In addition to electricity many homes uses fuels for their energy needs, like natural gas, heating oil, liquid petroleum gas (LPG), or coal.  For each of these fuels we can estimate a carbon intensity that tells us the amount of emissions our fuel use creates.  Again we want this factor to capture both the direct emissions from the combustion of fuels and indirect emissions from the mining, processing, and transportation of the fuel.

The direct emissions from the combustion of fuels are the same throughout the world as they are determined by the physical properties of the fuel.  The indirect emissions from the rest of the fuel’s life cycle vary depending on the technology used to prepare and transport the fuel, as well as the distances it must travel.  The indirect factor is often around 10-20% of the total life cycle and is estimated from life-cycle analysis literature.

Combining the direct and indirect factors give an emissions factor for the full life-cycle of the fuel.  Natural gas is roughly 6.6 kg CO₂e/therm or 0.22 kg CO₂e/kWh, more than 85% of which arises directly from combustion.  Heating oil is around 11.6 kg CO₂e/US gallon or 3.1 kg CO₂e/litre.  LPG is 6.8 kg CO₂e/US gallon or 1.8 kg CO₂e/litre.

Waste and Water

Beyond energy sources the two further components of our housing footprint we calculate are waste disposal and water use.

Emissions from waste disposal are mainly the result of methane produced at landfill sites as well as transport.  By calculating how much waste you produce each week and multiplying by 52 you can get your annual waste production. Then multiplied by a carbon intensity to get your footprint.  The intensity will differ greatly from country to country depending on how much waste goes to landfills, how much is incinerated and how much is recycled.  Intensities capturing these differences can be drawn from life cycle literature or estimated from national inventories of greenhouse gasses.

Water use can also be surprisingly carbon-intensive in some places.  Emissions come from two main sources, electricity used in pumping water during its supply and the methane and nitrous oxide that arises from waste water and sewage treatment.  Again, intensities differ greatly from country to country but once you work out your daily usage you can multiply by 365 for your yearly usage and apply intensity to calculate your footprint.

If you want to develop a GHG Inventory/carbon footprint for your organization. GE3S provides Carbon footprint services in UAE. Please feel free to leave an email @ vishal.kumar@ge3s.org