The given following things are included: 1. Greenhouse effect and its impact 2. Carbon sinks and sources 3. Carbon cycle 4.Global forest cover and carbon emissions 5. Global energy consumption 6. Carbon offset potential of renewable sources estimation 7. Remedial and mitigation actions 8. Carbon sequestration 9. Enhanced oil recovery 10. Carbon capture and storage 11. What can we do from our end?

1. Estimating Carbon offset
potential of renewable
energy technologies vs
trees
Submitted by: Nayan Choudhary

2. Outline:
► The Greenhouse effect
► Impact of greenhouse effect on planet
► Carbon sinks and sources
► Carbon cycle
► Global forest cover and carbon emissions
► Global energy consumption
► Carbon offset potential of renewable
sources estimation
► Remedial and mitigation actions
► Carbon sequestration
► Enhanced oil recovery
► Carbon capture and storage
► What can we do from our end?

3. The Greenhouse Effect
1. It is a type of warming process balancing
the earth’s cooling process.
2. Solar radiations are passed onto the
earth’s surface.
3. Earth’s surface gets heated which in turn
emits radiation to the atmosphere.
4. Atmospheric gases like CO2, CH4, N2, O3
etc. absorb the energy.
5. These gases have tendency to absorb the
infrared energy emitted by the earth’s
surface.
6. The energised molecules further emit
heat energy in all directions

4. Impacts of greenhouse effect on planet
1. Temperature rise, global warming, and uneven rainfall
distributions.
2. Increased fresh water flow rates, partly due to ocean
water evaporation and partly due to melting of ice.
3. The oceans serve as carbon sinks but due to increased
temperature CO2 will not dissolve in them, thus adding
more carbon to the environment.
4. The oxygen concentration inside the water bodies will
start decreasing thus resulting in extinction of species.
5. Extreme climate effects will give rise to many
infectious disease.
6. Lower production in agriculture sector.

5. Carbon Sinks and Sources
1. Carbon sinks: They are natural or artificial reservoirs
that absorb and store carbon through the process of
carbon sequestration( capturing and storing CO2). Just
as carbon sources are worldwide, so are carbon sinks,
and understanding their working and how they are
changing is important in predicting the impacts of
climate change. Examples of carbon sinks are plants,
plankton, and the ocean.
2. Carbon sources: They are any natural or artificial
production site of carbon or any chemical compounds
composed of carbon, such as carbon dioxide and
methane. For example, the burning of fossil fuels,
forest fires, animal respiration, and plant degradation
are all sources of carbon.

6. Carbon Cycle

7. Carbon offset
► Carbon offset potential means the ability of a particular technology to absorb
the emissions and hence reduce the emissions.
► A carbon offset is a reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide or
other greenhouse gases, made in order to compensate for emissions made
elsewhere.
► The natural carbon sinks like forest and oceans have great carbon offset
potential.

8. Global forest cover
1. Trees are critical to all aspects of life,
for providing oxygen to all living
organisms, maintaining the carbon
cycle, support ecosystems by providing
habitat to all species and preventing soil
erosion.
2. A mature tree(more than 10 years age)
absorbs carbon dioxide at a rate of 21
Kg per year.
3. While young trees absorb 10 Kg per
year.
4. Considering 1 acre of forest land and the
gap between trees is 20 ft., the no. of
trees in 1 acre of forest come out to be
109.
5. These 109 trees can absorb a total of
2000 kg carbon per year.

9. Global forest cover and carbon emissions
► Going by the earlier figure, since the year 2000
we have lost 386 million hectares of forest
cover, It comes out that we have nearly lost
sinks which could have absorbed nearly 2
billion tonnes of CO2.
► On an average, we are losing 25 million
hectares of forest cover every year, this implies
we are annually decreasing the carbon sinks
worth potential to absorb 200 million tonnes.
► The annual CO2 emission in the year 2019 was
35 billion tonnes.
► The oceans absorb nearly 2 billion tonnes of
CO2
► Going by the estimation, the trees nearly
absorb 20 billion tonnes of CO2.
► From the above calculations it can be shown
that the, still there are no sinks available for
about 13 billion tonnes of CO2.
► So there is net annual add up nearly 13 billion

10. Global energy consumption
► From year 2000 to 2019, the global
energy demands have drastically
increased.
► So, the increment in non-renewable
sources too is observed. From year
2014 to 2019, 1.5% increase in energy
production by using oil is observed.
► However, still energy from renewable
sources make up about a very small
percent of our total energy
consumption.

11. Global energy consumption
Renewable energy % of total energy produced vs years

12. Carbon offset potential estimation of
renewable sources
1. In 2013, total energy consumption of world was 19 TW hr.
2. It is known that for 1 Kw hr energy consumed the total carbon release into
atmosphere is 0.5 kg.
3. Total carbon emissions made if each source was non-renewable = 9.5 billion
tons CO2 per year
4. Original carbon emissions made by non-renewable sources,(83% energy by
non-renewable sources) = 7.79 billion tonnes per year.
5. So by this estimation, we come to the conclusion that renewable sources of
energy has prevented 1.71 billion tonnes of carbon emissions in the year
2013.

13. Carbon offset potential estimation of renewable
sources
1. Renewable sources of the energy is one of the technologies which can help in
carbon emissions reduction. Others can be using cleaner fuels, increasing
efficiency of the existing technologies.
2. However, they can only succeed in reducing emissions if older non-renewable
technologies are shut down or the emissions from those non-renewable sectors are
removed.
3. As can be seen from the previous graphs that there was an increment in
renewable technologies still the carbon emissions were increasing. Renewable
sources of energy has helped prevent the situation from worsening.
4. Renewable sources of energy are not a sink for carbon they are just an alternative
to non-renewables sources. It will take at least, 40 to 50 years to do a complete
shift to renewables, till then carbon sequestration is our best option to reduce
the emissions.

14. Can trees alone help reduce the emissions?
► Consider the case of India. In India total Carbon emission amount
to 2.3 billion tonnes per year.
► Total area of India is 816 million acres, If every piece of land is
used for planting trees, then also the total carbon reduction will be
1.6 billion tons per year.
► Still 0.7 billion tonnes carbon will be added to the environment per
year.
► So there is utmost need of reduction in emissions.
► Alone reforestation and afforestation cannot work to reduce the
emissions, all kinds of approaches like reforestation, emission
reduction in non-renewable sources , increase in renewable energy
sources, needs to be used to achieve the goal of net zero
emissions.
► At this point we have emitted so much CO2 that we are almost
certain to miss our targets of limiting global warming to 1.5-2 ᵒC,
by Paris agreement.

15. Remedial and mitigation actions
► Population reduction: An average human generates 1 ton of carbon per year, So
regulation in population is a nice way to mitigate global warming and total
population of world is 7.9 billion.
► Carbon sequestering:
► Carbon Capture and storage:
► Energy efficiency and conservation: Decreasing the energy consumption and also
increasing the efficiency, will in turn lead to decrement in emissions.
► Transport: Reducing petroleum requirement in transport sector by shifting to other
alternatives like biofuels, hydrogen fuel cells, hybrid electric vehicles, public
transport etc.

16. Carbon sequestration is the process by which carbon dioxide is captured and stored.
Primarily there are 3 types of carbon sequestration:
1. Biological sequestration: It refers to the storage of atmospheric carbon in
vegetation, soils, wood, and aquatic ecosystems.
2. Geological sequestration: It refers to the process by which carbon and carbon
dioxide are stored in geological formations. This process is foundational for the
formation of fossil fuels and is used as a part of enhanced oil recovery.
3. Technological sequestration: It refers to the artificial processes in which carbon
and carbon dioxide are trapped and stored. Presently there are three forms of
technological sequestration: graphene production, direct air capture, and
engineered molecules.
4. Technologies like direct air capture are too expensive and are not used at large
scale currently.
Carbon Sequestration.

17. Enhanced oil recovery
It is done by increasing the
pressure inside the well and
forcing the oil to drive to
surface. The pressure is
increased by first flooding the
reservoir with water and then
forcing CO2 gas through it.

18. Carbon Capture and storage (CCS)
► It is a technique where waste CO2 is separated and transported and deposited to the
site where it can’t enter the atmosphere.
► Usually the CO2 is captured from large point sources such as a cement factory
or biomass power plant, and normally it is stored in an underground geological
formation. Such that CO2 is trapped in the porous, permeable rocks.
► As of 2019, there are 17 operating CCS projects in the world, capturing 31.5 million
tons of CO2 per year.
► There are 3 different types of technology used for carbon capture:
a. Post combustion capture
b. Pre-combustion capture
c. Oxy-fuel combustion capture.

19. Post Combustion capture
1. In this method first the primary fuel is combusted and the combusted fuel is
passed through the separation column.
2. In this method CO2 is separated from the flue gas by bubbling the gas through
a packed absorption column containing liquid solvents like
monoethanolamines (MEA)
3. Once column becomes saturated, superheated steam is passed through the
column, which releases the absorbed CO2.
4. Further the released CO2 can be stored and transported to the underground
rock formations.
5. This technique is used to capture CO2 from large power plants.
6. For separation of CO2 in natural gas processing industry, similar kind of
approach is used.

20. Post Combustion Capture

21. Pre-Combustion Capture
1. In this method the primary fuel, is kept in a reactor and steam and air is
passed into the reactor, to produce a mixture of CO and H2 (syn gas).
1. This mixture is then passed to a second reactor, the mixture reacts with
steam in the second reactor results in formation of more H2 gas ,and also the
conversion of CO to CO2 , by water gas shift reaction.
1. At last the mixture of H2 and CO2 is passed through the a separation column,
and ultimately the separated CO2 can be captured and stored, while H2 can
be passed to the turbine.

23. Oxy-fuel Combustion capture
1. This technology uses pure oxygen instead of air for combustion of primary
fuel, as the air contains other gases too and after combustion CO2 makes
only 15-20% of the waste gas(N2, Ar, CO2, water vapor etc.) and thus makes
the separation process energy intensive and difficult.
2. Using this method, the waste gases will only contain CO2 and water vapour.
3. The water vapour can be condensed and hence CO2 can be piped and
transported to the storage facility.
4. This method too requires the production of liquid oxygen, which can
consume about 15% of the total energy of the powerstation.

24. Carbon Capture and storage

25. Carbon separation technology
There are various technologies available to separate carbon from atmosphere:
► Membrane separation processes: H2/CO2 separation for pre-combustion,
O2/N2 separation for post-combustion, while O2/N2 separation for oxy-fuel
combustion. Using nanofiltration membranes.
► Absorption: Absorption of carbon using amines is dominant in industries, it
commonly known as amine scrubbing.
► Adsorption : Adsorption using zeolites, carbon nanotubes,amines, etc.
► Cryogenic : Uses principle of phase change for separation, here flue gas is
condensed to temperatures of about -120 ℃, resulting in formation of dry ice.

26. What can we do to reduce emissions from our
end?

27. THANK YOU