3. Carbon footprinting – what is it?
• Aim is to quantify the total contribution to the
greenhouse effect of a product, service etc
• All direct and indirect contributions considered,
including manufacture, operation,
decomissioning.
• By its nature, this is an approximate science –
however, produces answers to a great enough
accuracy to be useful
• Remember, what matters for climate change is
cumulative emissions (i.e. the accumulation of all
of the little bits of emissions into the atmosphere)
4. Some basic CO2e quantities
What do I release if I burn (at sea level)....
1 pint of petrol
1kg CO2e
=
1 chick pea’s
volume of petrol
1g CO2e
=
500 litres of
petrol
1 tonne
CO2e
=
5. Some basic CO2e quantities
1 paperback book
1kg CO2e
=
7 pints cold tap
water
1g CO2e
=
Flying London to
Athens and back
again (per
passenger)
1 tonne
CO2e
=
6.
7. What is required of developed countries?
• Context: Paris Climate agreement
“Holding the increase in the global average temperature
to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels” (Article 2)
• Considering that developing countries’
emissions will peak later than rich countries
(Article 4):
• To have 67% chance of staying under 2
degrees, developed countries need to achieve:
• 10% decreases in CO2e emissions year-on-year (UK
achieved 2% last year)
• Total decarbonisation of energy sector (i.e. nuclear
and/or renewables only) by 2035/2040
9. TOTAL (not just electricity) energy consumption UK
Transport
Heating In all low-carbon
plans, as much of
these are electrified as
possible (with low-
carbon electricity)
13. UK grid electricity
• Nuclear is never switched off or turned down (takes weeks!).
• “Wind energy, with very low running costs, is generally used whenever it is
available” (IME report, 2014)
• Gas & coal are used to fill in the rest
• Therefore, every unit of electricity you save is a fossil-fuel-generated unit!
Awesome.
14. Electronics
1 email (no
attachment):
4g
1 email (big
attachment):
50g
Laptop + 2
monitors
for 1
workday:
500g
(1kWh)
0g 250g 750g500g 1000g
One hour
TV: 70g
Leaving
projector
on
overnight:
>1500g
CO2e
16. Transport: Travelling 1 mile
Cereal-
powered:
90g
Bacon-
powered:
200g
Well-used
city bus:
150g
Typical
train/tube:
150g
Small car
@ 60mph:
350g
Average
car: 700g
Landrover
discovery
@ 90mph:
2200g
Aircraft:
400g
Charged with
average UK
grid: 260g
Charged with
renewables /
nuclear: 130g
Electric car
Approx 1/3 of CO2e
is embedded
(manufacture)
1000g0g 250g 750g500g
CO2e
19. Food & Drink
Strawberries:
150g punnet in season
1800g punnet out-of-season
Beer:
300g local brew from pub
500g pint of lager
900g bottle of beer from the
shop
Bowl of porridge:
80g (water only)
300g (half milk)
550g (all milk)
CO2e
0g 250g 750g500g 1000g
1 can Coke or 1
bottle water:
170g
1 glass
bottle
Coke: 360g
In general:
• Local in-season fruit & veg good
• Cereals/wheat/oats good
• Chickens, pigs, rice, dairy not as good
• Sheep, cows (ruminants), out-of-season soft fruit etc worst!
20. Effect of diet on emissions
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-diet
21. Tea & Coffee
CO2e
0g 250g 750g500g 1000g
Tea with milk:
60g
Large
cappuccino:
230g
Herbal/black
tea: 25g
Large latte:
340g
Soya milk better?
Yes if does not
contribute to
deforestation (check
first!)
The milk in a cup of tea
is higher-carbon than
heating the water!
Black coffee:
25g
25. Categories of influence on
emissions
• Direct: Ways that you can, on the day, directly
reduce emissions (e.g. use less electricity,
don’t take the car)
• Indirect: Ways that you can, by reducing
demand, reduce emissions (e.g. not fly/get the
bus). Also ‘pester power’
• Strategic/political: emissions that largely only
e.g. governments have significant influence
over (e.g. industry, electrifying transport (?),
decarbonising electricity grid (?))
27. Which slices can be decarbonised?
Influenced by UK grid
carbon intensity
Not influenced by UK
grid carbon intensity
Blue wedges can be theoretically ‘decarbonised’; brown wedges cannot...?
28. Implications: Inter-generational justice
• UK climate policy is
incompatible with the
Paris agreement
• Under current
emissions rates, no
carbon budget will be
left for our children and
certainly for our grand-
children
29. Climate Change: The messy desk analogy
CO2e
• You can *only* add to the mess
• You can’t ‘clean up’ like some other pollution
• Emissions accumulate in the atmosphere year-on-
year
• Temperature rise relative to total emissions
33. and finally...climate change
• IPCC emissions scenarios
• IPCC reports on four emission scenarios
• Lowest (RCP2.6) is the only one in which we stay under 2
degrees
• Highest is unabated emissions (RCP8.5, leading to >4
degrees) , with two intermediate scenarios
34. Emissions are tracking above IPCC worst-case
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n1/full/nclimate1783.html?WT.ec_i
d=NCLIMATE-201301
• Emissions are
currently tracking
ABOVE the worst-
case scenario
modelled by the
IPCC
35. 35
Oil use in UK
Domestic
production
Imports
How we use
it: mainly
road
transport
It's an analogy to illustrate the causes of climate change.
The desk represents the atmosphere. In the presentation I talked through the following:
In most pollution situations, we tend to think of the problem like a messy desk. So, yes it's bad if we mess up the desk, but it's OK because ultimately we'll usually be able to clean up the mess if we put our minds to it (hence the dustpan & brush).
Climate change, however, has one key difference: we have no way of extracting the pollution (CO2) from the atmosphere and CO2 hangs about for 100s or 1000s of years. As soon as we create emissions, that's that: the horse has bolted and we can't clean them up. No dustpan & brush!*
Fundamentally the only metric which influences the greenhouse effect (and hence warming which will happen) is cumulative emissions. As this is a fairly abstract concept, the messy desk helps. In the analogy, the only thing that matters is the TOTAL amount of mess which has built up on the desk.
This now helps to put the required actions on emissions in perspective. Reducing annual emissions by, say, 10% might sound impressive, but all it means is you are adding 9 dirty mugs to the desk every day instead of 10.
This then helps to explain why such large magnitudes of emissions reductions are required to keep cumulative emissions to a level which MAY prevent dangerous/catastrophic climate change. On an annual emissions graph, it's the area under the curve which matters; on the messy desk, it's the total amount of mess.
Current government commitments (the Copenhagen Accord) imply that a greater proportion of the remaining allowable desk mess (aka carbon budget) will be allocated to developing countries (non-Annex 1 countries).
The Tyndall Centre has made an effort to quantify the implications of this split of the carbon budget in light of the 2 degree target. Kevin Anderson presented these results in an Arup-sponsored event in Manchester in 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KumLH9kOpOI
The answer is that developed countries (Annex 1 countries) have such a small slice of the pie that they would need to reduce emissions year-on-year by 10%, starting in 2012. They would also need to almost totally decarbonise their energy generation sectors by 2035-2040 (i.e. nuclear and renewables only).
The implications for the projects that we work on day-to-day are that for Annex 1 countries to contribute to their commitments (and for a outside chance of meeting 2 degrees), every single project we are involved in in Annex 1 countries from now on should be true carbon-neutral (considering both construction and operational carbon). How do we achieve this? A fascinating question...
It's an analogy to illustrate the causes of climate change.
The desk represents the atmosphere. In the presentation I talked through the following:
In most pollution situations, we tend to think of the problem like a messy desk. So, yes it's bad if we mess up the desk, but it's OK because ultimately we'll usually be able to clean up the mess if we put our minds to it (hence the dustpan & brush).
Climate change, however, has one key difference: we have no way of extracting the pollution (CO2) from the atmosphere and CO2 hangs about for 100s or 1000s of years. As soon as we create emissions, that's that: the horse has bolted and we can't clean them up. No dustpan & brush!*
Fundamentally the only metric which influences the greenhouse effect (and hence warming which will happen) is cumulative emissions. As this is a fairly abstract concept, the messy desk helps. In the analogy, the only thing that matters is the TOTAL amount of mess which has built up on the desk.
This now helps to put the required actions on emissions in perspective. Reducing annual emissions by, say, 10% might sound impressive, but all it means is you are adding 9 dirty mugs to the desk every day instead of 10.
This then helps to explain why such large magnitudes of emissions reductions are required to keep cumulative emissions to a level which MAY prevent dangerous/catastrophic climate change. On an annual emissions graph, it's the area under the curve which matters; on the messy desk, it's the total amount of mess.
Current government commitments (the Copenhagen Accord) imply that a greater proportion of the remaining allowable desk mess (aka carbon budget) will be allocated to developing countries (non-Annex 1 countries).
The Tyndall Centre has made an effort to quantify the implications of this split of the carbon budget in light of the 2 degree target. Kevin Anderson presented these results in an Arup-sponsored event in Manchester in 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KumLH9kOpOI
The answer is that developed countries (Annex 1 countries) have such a small slice of the pie that they would need to reduce emissions year-on-year by 10%, starting in 2012. They would also need to almost totally decarbonise their energy generation sectors by 2035-2040 (i.e. nuclear and renewables only).
The implications for the projects that we work on day-to-day are that for Annex 1 countries to contribute to their commitments (and for a outside chance of meeting 2 degrees), every single project we are involved in in Annex 1 countries from now on should be true carbon-neutral (considering both construction and operational carbon). How do we achieve this? A fascinating question...
It's an analogy to illustrate the causes of climate change.
The desk represents the atmosphere. In the presentation I talked through the following:
In most pollution situations, we tend to think of the problem like a messy desk. So, yes it's bad if we mess up the desk, but it's OK because ultimately we'll usually be able to clean up the mess if we put our minds to it (hence the dustpan & brush).
Climate change, however, has one key difference: we have no way of extracting the pollution (CO2) from the atmosphere and CO2 hangs about for 100s or 1000s of years. As soon as we create emissions, that's that: the horse has bolted and we can't clean them up. No dustpan & brush!*
Fundamentally the only metric which influences the greenhouse effect (and hence warming which will happen) is cumulative emissions. As this is a fairly abstract concept, the messy desk helps. In the analogy, the only thing that matters is the TOTAL amount of mess which has built up on the desk.
This now helps to put the required actions on emissions in perspective. Reducing annual emissions by, say, 10% might sound impressive, but all it means is you are adding 9 dirty mugs to the desk every day instead of 10.
This then helps to explain why such large magnitudes of emissions reductions are required to keep cumulative emissions to a level which MAY prevent dangerous/catastrophic climate change. On an annual emissions graph, it's the area under the curve which matters; on the messy desk, it's the total amount of mess.
Current government commitments (the Copenhagen Accord) imply that a greater proportion of the remaining allowable desk mess (aka carbon budget) will be allocated to developing countries (non-Annex 1 countries).
The Tyndall Centre has made an effort to quantify the implications of this split of the carbon budget in light of the 2 degree target. Kevin Anderson presented these results in an Arup-sponsored event in Manchester in 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KumLH9kOpOI
The answer is that developed countries (Annex 1 countries) have such a small slice of the pie that they would need to reduce emissions year-on-year by 10%, starting in 2012. They would also need to almost totally decarbonise their energy generation sectors by 2035-2040 (i.e. nuclear and renewables only).
The implications for the projects that we work on day-to-day are that for Annex 1 countries to contribute to their commitments (and for a outside chance of meeting 2 degrees), every single project we are involved in in Annex 1 countries from now on should be true carbon-neutral (considering both construction and operational carbon). How do we achieve this? A fascinating question...
It's an analogy to illustrate the causes of climate change.
The desk represents the atmosphere. In the presentation I talked through the following:
In most pollution situations, we tend to think of the problem like a messy desk. So, yes it's bad if we mess up the desk, but it's OK because ultimately we'll usually be able to clean up the mess if we put our minds to it (hence the dustpan & brush).
Climate change, however, has one key difference: we have no way of extracting the pollution (CO2) from the atmosphere and CO2 hangs about for 100s or 1000s of years. As soon as we create emissions, that's that: the horse has bolted and we can't clean them up. No dustpan & brush!*
Fundamentally the only metric which influences the greenhouse effect (and hence warming which will happen) is cumulative emissions. As this is a fairly abstract concept, the messy desk helps. In the analogy, the only thing that matters is the TOTAL amount of mess which has built up on the desk.
This now helps to put the required actions on emissions in perspective. Reducing annual emissions by, say, 10% might sound impressive, but all it means is you are adding 9 dirty mugs to the desk every day instead of 10.
This then helps to explain why such large magnitudes of emissions reductions are required to keep cumulative emissions to a level which MAY prevent dangerous/catastrophic climate change. On an annual emissions graph, it's the area under the curve which matters; on the messy desk, it's the total amount of mess.
Current government commitments (the Copenhagen Accord) imply that a greater proportion of the remaining allowable desk mess (aka carbon budget) will be allocated to developing countries (non-Annex 1 countries).
The Tyndall Centre has made an effort to quantify the implications of this split of the carbon budget in light of the 2 degree target. Kevin Anderson presented these results in an Arup-sponsored event in Manchester in 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KumLH9kOpOI
The answer is that developed countries (Annex 1 countries) have such a small slice of the pie that they would need to reduce emissions year-on-year by 10%, starting in 2012. They would also need to almost totally decarbonise their energy generation sectors by 2035-2040 (i.e. nuclear and renewables only).
The implications for the projects that we work on day-to-day are that for Annex 1 countries to contribute to their commitments (and for a outside chance of meeting 2 degrees), every single project we are involved in in Annex 1 countries from now on should be true carbon-neutral (considering both construction and operational carbon). How do we achieve this? A fascinating question...
