Carbon Footprinting Flashcards
1
Q
What is energy management?
A
- Monitoring, managing and conserving energy
2
Q
What do we need to know for energy management/
A
Need to know inputs, input sources, main sources of consumption, how to conserve this
3
Q
What are the different types of energy sources?
A
- Electricity (focus)
- Gas
- Wind power
- Solar power
- Hydropower
- Geothermal power
- Coal
Can be separate or on the same path
4
Q
What are important questions to ask in energy management?
A
- What is each energy source being used for?
- What us the source of power for electricity?
5
Q
What is the lifecycle of electricity generation?
A
- The process generating power and releasing/distributing the power
- Resources (renewable & un-renewable)
- Transformation
- Generation
- Consumers (point of consumption: large scale industry / small scale - home)
6
Q
What is the energy generation mix of the UK in terms of 2014 energy flow?
A
- Gas, coal, electricity (primary and secondary sources), bioenergy & petroleum
- Natural gas mostly used for heating, domestic use
- Petroleum mostly use for transport
7
Q
What were the biggest sources of energy in terms of the 2014 energy flow?
A
Non-renewable - lots of sources are inputted
8
Q
What doesn’t match in terms of the 2014 energy flow?
A
- Outputs do not match the scale of the inputs, there are massive losses - 59.4% losses in 2014
- Hugely inefficient process
9
Q
Why has energy consumption in UK industry reduced?
A
- Less manufacturing
10
Q
How much has coal consumption reduced by in the last 30 years and why?
A
- Coal consumption has massively reduced
- Over last 30 years from roughly 110 million tonnes to roughly 20 million tonnes
- More of a consumer economy than manufacturing
11
Q
What happened during the period of coal decline?
A
More energy was consumed
12
Q
What are carbon emissions determined by?
A
- Not necessarily determined by consumption
- Determining factor are the different inputs being used
13
Q
How much has the consumption of renewable energy increased by?
A
Fourfold since 2010
14
Q
How much has fossil fuel consumption decreased by?
A
48% since 2010
15
Q
What happened in 2019 in terms of energy generation?
A
Renewables passed fossil fuels
16
Q
What needs to happen to energy consumption to decrease damage to the environment?
A
- Overall consumption of energy needs to reduce
- Make the reduced energy consumption from renewable sources
- Not enough to just switch to renewables as there is still environmental impacts
17
Q
What is the potential of energy generation?
A
- Larger than what we are actually producing
- E.g. Building wind power stations has the potential to generate energy, but they are not being built due to other factors - only potential energy generation
18
Q
What are the impacts of electricity generation in terms of inputs?
A
- Renewable resource depletion
- Non-renewable resource depletion
- Habitat disturbance
- Aesthetic considerations
19
Q
How is electricity manages at the University of Southampton?
A
- Have display certificates - amount of energy consumed annually and the sources of energy, publicly accessible - 60% renewables / from powerplant in the university
- Carbon management is bespoke to the university and the different buildings on usage
- 2004 energy centre has combined heated powerplant - efficient process and use of gas - reduces carbon emissions
- Increase carbon management projects - reutilising existing buildings - sustainable refurbishment e.g. double-glazed windows
20
Q
Where does most of the energy consumption come from in the University of Southampton?
A
- Computer/associated usage
- Lights
- Heating
- Ventilation
- Chemistry labs (water pumping, extraction pumps, fuel)
- Office buildings (high energy, need cooling methods due to high density of people - photovoltaics)
- Old buildings = inefficient
21
Q
What do large institutions have to record in terms of carbon emissions?
A
Half-hourly recordings of carbon emissions
22
Q
What do the graphs of Southampton University buildings show in regards to carbon emissions?
A
- Carbon emissions increase during daytime and decrease during night-time
- B7 - Engineering & offices (levels 4&5) - mixed use building - baseload - even when no one is in the university, carbon is still being emitted and doesn’t drop below 15 KgCO2e - equipment is left on
- Electricity and carbon data have slightly different relationships
- Theatre - emissions everyday - lower baseload - shoots up at 6pm and drops just after 10pm
23
Q
What is ‘Blackout’ at University of Southampton?
A
- Want to reduce the baseload of carbon emissions
- Turn off any equipment around the university that was not being used overnight/weekend
- 8 months of planning
- 250 students & 50 staff
- Managed to switch off equipment in 2 and half hours
- Reduced emissions by 6%
- Saved £1600 over the weekend, 7 tonnes of carbon, enough to power 5 family homes
24
Q
What does HE stand for in terms of managing carbon emissions?
A
Higher Education
25
What does HEFCE stand for?
Higher Education Funding Council of England
26
What are the HEFCE emissions sector targets?
- Scope 1, 2
- 34% reduction by 2020 against a 1990 baseline
- 43% reduction by 2020 against the 2005 baseline
- Institutions must develop their own specific targets
27
What are the emissions sector targets set by University of Southampton?
- Carbon management plan
- Scope 1, 2
- 20% absolute reduction by 2020
- £0.5-1m per annum commitment
28
What is the issue with the 2005/06 baseline of University of Southampton in terms of meeting the emissions sector targets?
- Already had a combined heating powerplant
- B53&59 Mountbatten - most energy intensive part of the university - massive energy drain
- Mountbatten building burnt down in 2005
- Baseline is based on a time when the biggest energy intensive building wasn't there
- Need the whole picture when setting a baseline
29
What are the possible forthcoming changing to emissions in University of Southampton?
- Unknown
- Research uni so may be able to discover new ways to use energy more efficiently
- But large engineering department use a lot of energy and are likely to increase
30
What are the drivers for managing carbon emissions in HE (Higher Education)?
- Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficient Scheme
- Planning requirements
- Stakeholder reputation
- Stakeholder & society pressure
- Energy consumption
- Cost - some buildings cost £millions in energy
- Education for sustainable development - overall awareness
31
What is the turnover of University of Southampton?
Over £600 million per year
- Small margin for capital investment
- Potential carbon input
32
How are reduction in carbon emissions in HE realised/achieved?
- Measurement & data
- Physical measures
- Institutional culture and behaviour change - most important
- Supply chain management - population of the university in 30,000 (small town) - massive infrastructure and supply - resource inputs - e.g. millions of sheets of paper per week - huge consumption point
- Projects e.g. 'Blackout', 'Student Switch-off', 'Waste Wars' - do they have enough of an impact?
33
What are the 2 categories of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG)?
- Natural
| - Anthropogenic
34
What gases are in the Kyoto Basket?
- CO2 - Carbon dioxide
- CH4 - Methane
- N2O - Nitrous oxide
- SF6 - Sulfur hexaflouride
- HFCs - Hydroflourocarbons
- PFCs - Perflourocarbons
- NF3 - Nitrogen triflouride
35
What as happened to CO2 levels since the mid-19th century?
Large atmospheric CO2 increases
36
What are the impacts of climate change?
- Flooding/drought
- Melting ice caps / increase sea level rise
- Increased poverty
- Increased extreme weather events
37
What is the need for carbon footprinting?
- Required decrease in anthropogenic GHG emissions
- Cannot manage what is not measured!
- Provides a technique of relating human activity with GHG emissions
- Not just a focus on mitigation and adaptation but also reduction
- Make it real to people - make it related to point of consumption
38
Origin of carbon footprinting: What is the 1960s Life Cycle Assessment?
- Driven by Society for Environmental Toxixology & Chemistry (SETAC)
- Holistic assessment of environmental consequences associated with the life of a process or product
- A tool to aid decision making
- Consumption = extraction, packaging, storage, use, keep
39
What are the issued with the 1960s Life Cycle Assessment?
- Complex - multiple data sources, where does the data come from?
- Expensive
40
What are the issues with the 1960s Life Cycle Assessment?
- Complex - multiple data sources, where does the data come from?
- Expensive
41
Origins of carbon footprinting: What is the 1996 Ecological Footprint (Wackernagel & Rees)?
-"A methodology for estimating the area of the Earth's surface needed to provide all necessary resources to, and process waste and pollution from, a given population, organisation or activity."
42
What are the issues with the 1996 Ecological Footprint (Wackernagel & Rees)?
- Prone to subjectivity
| - Difficult to apply sub-globally
43
What is carbon footprinting?
"A measure of the total amount of CO2 and CH4 emissions of a defined population, system or activity considering all relevant sources, sinks and storage within the spatial and temporal boundary of the population, system or activity of interest. Calculated as CO2 equivalents using the relevant 100-year global warming potential." (Wright et al. 2011)
44
What are the issues with carbon footprinting?
- Lack of agreement on a methodology and meaning
- More difficult data is to get hold of the more difficult it is for organisations to implement ways to reduce carbon footprint
45
What gases does carbon footprinting involve?
Kyoto gases
46
What are direct emissions sources?
- From the process, activity or system
- Under control
- Simplest to manage
- E.g. switching lights on and off
47
What are indirect emissions sources?
- From supply chain emissions
- Under influence
- Harder to manage
- Must consider boundary settings
- E.g. contractor maintenance people coming in produce emissions which can't be controlled by institution
48
What are emission scopes?
A way to categorise and report emissions
49
What are Scope 1 emissions?
Direct result of the population, system or activity e.g. combined heated powerplant / company owned vehicles
50
What are Scope 2 emissions?
Upstream emissions from energy generation e.g. energy from the electricity grid to use onsite
51
What are Scope 3 emissions?
Indirect lifecyle emissions e.g. employee business travel / waste disposal / contractor owned vehicles (Unilink & Bluestar)
52
Which emissions Scope can be higher?
Scope 3 emissions can be higher than both Scope 1 & 2
53
Which emissions Scopes are easier to get data for?
- Data is easy to collect for Scope 1 & 2
- More difficult to get accurate data for Scope 3 - makes it difficult to report on Scope 3 carbon emissions for government targets
54
What is wrong with the UK emissions data?
- Counting emissions wrong - only accounts for manufacturing
- Doesn't consider consumption
- Based on manufacturing based model not consumption based, yet the UK has changed to consumption based society
55
What is the carbon footprint calculation?
- Emissions factors - emissions per unit of activity
- E.g. kgCO2 per km travelled, tCO2 per kWh electricity used
- Emissions = activity * emission factor
- NOTE: always check the units match!
(see example in notes)
56
What is carbon footprint normalisation?
- Need to normalise GHGs i.e. a common metric
- 'CO2e' - Carbon dioxide equivalent
- 'GWP' - Global Warming Potential over 100-year period:
- > Warming potential of equivalent mass of CO2
- > CH4 GWP = 25
- > i.e. 1kg CH4 = 25 kg CO2
57
What is DEPHRA?
- Historical carbon emissions data
| - Can see trends in data for carbon emissions through time
