This document summarizes a project calculating the carbon footprint of an academic facility (Galgotias University). It includes an introduction describing the importance of calculating carbon footprints and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from ICT. The problem statement defines what a carbon footprint is and why it is important to calculate the footprint of an academic facility. The methodology section describes how the project will survey users of a web application to continuously update and refine the average carbon footprint calculated for the university based on its data set. The related works section briefly discusses similar carbon footprint calculation projects conducted at other universities.

1. Green ICT- Calculation of Carbon footprint of an academic facility(GU)
Project Work
submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the award of degree of
Bachelor of Technology
in
Computer Science & Engineering
Submitted By
Kriti Doneria (1201101088) and Neha Kumari (1201101348)
Under the supervision of
Mr Srinivas Arukonda
Assistant professor
SCHOOL OF COMPUTING SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
GALGOTIAS UNIVERSITY
GREATER NOIDA – 201306
NOV 2015
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2. Certificate
We hereby certify that the work which is being presented in the final year major project, in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the award of degree of Bachelor in Technology in Computer Science
and Engineering submitted in School of Computing Science and Engineering of Galgotias University,
Gr. Noida, is an authentic record of my own work carried out under the supervision of Mr
SrinivasArukonda and refers other researcher’s works which are duly listed in the reference section.
The matter presented in this project has not been submitted for the award of any other degree of this or
any other university.
(Kriti Doneria)
(Neha Kumari)
This is to certify that the above statement made by the candidate is correct and true to the best of my
knowledge.
(Name of
Supervisor)
School of Computing Science and Engineering
Galgotias University
Gr. Noida
Countersigned by
(Dr. Parma Nand) (Sibaram Khara)
Professor & Dean Dean (Academics)
School of Computing Science & Engineering Galgotias University
Galgotias University Gr. Noida
Gr. Noida
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3. TABLE OF CONTENTS
S.no Content Page no.
1 Introduction 4
2 Problem Statement 5
3 Related Work 6
4 Methodology used 7
5 References 8
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4. INTRODUCTION
The global climate is changing, largely due to the observed increases in human
produced greenhouse gases. It is estimated that Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) contributes around 2-2.5 per cent of Global greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions. These percentages are likely to grow as ICT becomes more widely
available.ICT has potential to decrease overall GHG by 15% and save global; industry
$US 800 billion in annual energy costs by 2020.
At the same time, ICT can significantly help reduce climate change by:
a) Promoting the development of more energy efficient devices, applications and
networks.
b) Encouraging environmentally friendly design, and
c) Investigate and record the data on the carbon dioxide footprint (CO2e) of ICT .
d) Work with stakeholders to identify industry trends in the adoption of green IT
practices and evaluate energy efficient technology that can reduce the environmental
impact of ICT.
e) Increase awareness amongst stakeholders about Green ICT.
Government’s starting renewable energy plans for their nations. Government’s starting
environmental procedures to help the environment out.
Human’s are becoming aware of the affects they take on this planet and acting.
In order to reduce the wastage usages the companies like Amazon, Google and others,
are taking advantage of virtualization to create their own data centers. These “private
clouds” offer many of the same economic and environmental benefits of the public cloud
while allowing companies to retain absolute control over their IT environment. HP is
one company to have made the shift to private cloud computing; the company
consolidated what used to be 85 data centers staffed by 19,000 IT workers to six cloud
data centers with half the IT staff.
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5. PROBLEM STATEMENT
A carbon footprint can broadly be defined as a measure of the greenhouse gas emissions
that are directly and indirectly caused by an activity or are accumulated over the life
stages of a product or service, expressed in carbon dioxide equivalents CO2-eq (ERC,
2010).
There are a total of 18 greenhouse gases with different global warming potentials, but
under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and
its Kyoto protocol, only the following set of gasses is considered for the purposes of
carbon accounting, with others being regulated elsewhere (ERC,2010):
• Carbon dioxide, CO2
• Methane, CH4
• Nitrous Oxide, N2O
• Hydrofluorocarbons, HFCs
• Perfluorocarbons, PFCs
• Sulphur dioxide, SF6.
We often overlook the importance of sensitizing the future professionals about the
impending disasters. A student is much more receptive to new ideas , practices and
technologies than an existing professionals. No amount of awareness campaigns can
reproduce the results of the learnings that are instilled in the foundational years. By
targeting these young minds at an early stage , we ensure greater environmental
sustainability to be achieved. Carbon Footprint is an important measure ans so is its
minimization. A locally optimized calculator can prove beneficial for the students as
well as the academic facility.
Knowing that every single activity undertaken in our day to day lives affects the quality
of air we breathe in, the food we consume and the water we use is a profound
realization.
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6. RELATED WORKS
Though this project is the first of its kind in India, similar studies have been carried out
by many leading academic facilities in the world, including but not limited to:-
University of Tennessee
University of Maryland, College Park.
Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Santa Clara University, USA
It is a common practice to have Office/Division/committee for sustainability in world
class academic facilities to keep a check on its contribution to the global warming and
to engage students in the process. Further, it helps to compare the data of different
facilities, thereby enabling cross pollination of best practices, future costs reduction and
better sustainability policies.
Apart from these, there have been studies and calculators to output Greenhouse
emissions for an individual, like the official footprint calculator from WWF and mobile
applications like Emmit that calculate the total footprint of a vehicular journey.
However, these focus on personal aspect of the carbon footprint, disregarding any
workplace impact if any.
The use of Web applications makes it very convenient, robust and efficient to collect
data for analytic and intelligence purposes in future.
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7. METHODOLOGY
The methodology used for this study is a survey technique that combines the results of
each user's footprint computed by the web application to update the average that has
been previously determined upon careful analysis of the academic facility's data set..
This is an adaptive average approach that has shown to work well for large and medium
data sets.
Theoretically, the more the user base grows, the more refined these results get.
To begin with, the required data set of the university were gathered, compiled and
sanitized. Some approximations and statistical measurements were used to arrive upon
estimates. Data was gathered from a range of internal sources. In some cases the data
holders were approached directly. Some interviews with data holders were conducted .
The data includes University specific water, electricity and paper consumption, waste
produced, use of natural lighting and renewable energy resources and miscellaneous
factors.
The total footprint of the University was then used to compute per Capita Carbon
footprint ie the average Carbon footprint of a student currently enrolled.
These findings were then used in comparative analysis with Carbon footprints based on
different demographical aspects.
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8. REFERENCES
Website- www.cleanaircoolplanet.org/toolkit/
Publication-Carbon Footprint of the University of Maryland, College Park: An Inventory of
Greenhouse Gas 2008
Emissions, 200November 2009
Website- gogreen.com
Website- www.universityofmaryland.au
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