Article

If the footprint fits

October 2008

Authors:

Carbon Trust, a UK-based government-funded organization, has initiated a carbon labeling scheme with total greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions given as carbon dioxide equivalent on consumer products and services. The trust awards Carbon Reduction Label to companies that have either reduced or are committed to reducing their carbon footprint, and also exerts the right to revoke the use of the label if the carbon emissions associated with the product are not reduced within a two-year period. Under the methodology, carbon labels for recycled paper products are likely to show considerably higher emissions than their virgin fiber counterparts. The scheme has generated a lot of debate about which paper products, recycled or virgin, are better, leading to confusion among consumers who will question the relevance of all forms of GHG emission control.

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Article

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Public perceptions of how to reduce carbon footprints of consumer food choices

November 2019 · Environmental Research Letters

Carbon footprints – the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with consumer food choices –substantially contribute to climate change. Life cycle analyses from climate and environmental sciences have identified effective rules for reducing these food-related carbon footprints, including eating seasonal produce and replacing dairy and red meat with plant-based products. In a national UK survey, ... [Show full abstract] we studied how many and which rules our participants generated for reducing GHG emissions of produce, dairy, and protein-rich products. We also asked participants to estimate GHG emission reductions associated with pre-selected rules, expressed in either grams or percentages. We found that participants generated few and relatively less effective rules, including ambiguous ones like 'Buy local'. Furthermore, participants' numerical estimates of pre-selected rules were less accurate when they assessed GHG emission reductions in grams rather than in percentages. Findings suggest a need for communicating fewer rules in percentages, for informing consumers about reducing food-related GHG emissions.

Conference Paper

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GREENHOUSE GAS FOOTPRINTING USING OVERSEER ® – 'THE WHOLE PICTURE'

December 2011

The inputs into OVERSEER ® Nutrient Budgets (Overseer) allow farm-specific greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to be estimated. Since development of the original model, international Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) standards have been developed for reporting greenhouse or carbon footprints (e.g. PAS 2050) and increasingly, data on GHG for a unit of product (kg milk solids, kg meat, and kg wool) are ... [Show full abstract] required. Overseer required GHG footprint reports to cover on-farm-specific emissions and to provide carbon footprint of products from the "cradle-to-farm-gate". Greenhouse gas emissions, converted to CO 2 equivalents on a 100-year basis, include methane, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and embodied GHG associated with inputs (fuel, electricity, fertilisers, supplements, chemicals, etc.) used on the farm and off-farm components such replacement animals grazed off-farm. Embodied GHG are determined using an LCA approach following PAS 2050 guidelines using a mix of national average data and farm-specific data. The GHG can be estimated with no additional inputs to the model, using defaults; alternatively, the user can input key information such as fuel and electricity use, transport distances, and fertiliser application methods. Changes in soil or plant carbon stocks are not included in the model. The design of the model means that emissions can be allocated to individual animal types and then used to produce two distinct GHG footprints reports based on either area or product. Animals, supplements, and effluent can be moved between farms. Procedures were adopted to ensure that area footprints can be additive across farms.

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Identifying Important Characteristics of Municipal Carbon Footprints

November 2010 · Ecological Economics

Local climate action has been identified as a vital contributor to global mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This paper focuses on the GHG emissions resulting from the provision of local public services, illustrated through the Carbon Footprint (CF) indicator. The CF of all 429 Norwegian municipalities is calculated and compared to variables of interest. Results show that the CF ... [Show full abstract] changes significantly depending on size and wealth. Small and/or wealthy municipalities tend to have a much higher CF per capita compared to more populated and/or less wealthy cities. While wealth and CF relate very well linearly, increased population is only beneficial up to a certain size. Results indicate that the CF per capita increases in municipalities with more than ~50,000 inhabitants, thus indicating a possible ideal size of municipalities to achieve the optimal municipal CF.

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Carbon Footprint of Nations: A Global, Trade-Linked Analysis

August 2009 · Environmental Science and Technology

Processes causing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions benefit humans by providing consumer goods and services. This benefit, and hence the responsibility for emissions, varies by purpose or consumption category and is unevenly distributed across and within countries. We quantify greenhouse gas emissions associated with the final consumption of goods and services for 73 nations and 14 aggregate world ... [Show full abstract] regions. We analyze the contribution of 8 categories: construction, shelter, food, clothing, mobility, manufactured products, services, and trade. National average per capita footprints vary from 1 tCO2e/y in African countries to approximately 30/y in Luxembourg and the United States. The expenditure elasticity is 0.57. The cross-national expenditure elasticity for just CO2, 0.81, corresponds remarkably well to the cross-sectional elasticities found within nations, suggesting a global relationship between expenditure and emissions that holds across several orders of magnitude difference. On the global level, 72% of greenhouse gas emissions are related to household consumption, 10% to government consumption, and 18% to investments. Food accounts for 20% of GHG emissions, operation and maintenance of residences is 19%, and mobility is 17%. Food and services are more important in developing countries, while mobility and manufactured goods rise fast with income and dominate in rich countries. The importance of public services and manufactured goods has not yet been sufficiently appreciated in policy. Policy priorities hence depend on development status and country-level characteristics.

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Hemp Concrete: Carbon Negative Construction

July 2016 · Emerging Materials Research

The onset of heavy greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from conventional construction practices has led to research on several plausible low-carbon dioxide footprint construction materials that are either carbon dioxide neutral or carbon dioxide negative. One such ‘green’ construction material is lime hemp concrete (LHC), hemp concrete or hempcrete, which are some of the many names of this novel ... [Show full abstract] construction material. Hemp concrete is essentially a composite made of lime and hemp shivs. This paper presents a literature review of the various studies carried out on hemp concrete to understand its properties, drawbacks and advantages in construction. The review dwells on discussion of hemp, use of lime as a binder material and the mechanical, thermal and hygric properties of LHC. The salient features of LHC with regard to mechanical, thermal and hygric properties and ecological impact are discussed in the paper. It is observed that further research on LHC is required to be able to establish mix design principles, improve the compressive and flexural strengths of LHC and its use as a load-bearing structural material for high-rise constructions and establish cradle-to-death GHG emissions, recyclability and reusability which seem to be promising propositions with hemp concrete.

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Articulating a trans-boundary infrastructure supply chain greenhouse gas emission footprint for citi...

March 2013 · Energy Policy

This paper compares the policy relevance and derives mathematical relationships between three approaches for GHG emissions accounting for cities. The three approaches are: (a) Purely-Geographic Inventory, (b) Trans-boundary Community-Wide Infrastructure Footprint (CIF), and (c) Consumption-Based Footprint (CBF). Mathematical derivations coupled with case study of three US communities (Denver ... [Show full abstract] Colorado, Routt Colorado, and Sarasota Florida), shows that no one method provides a larger or more holistic estimate of GHG emissions associated with communities. A net-producing community (Routt) demonstrates higher CIF GHG emissions relative to the CBF, while a net-consuming community (Sarasota) yields the opposite. Trade-balanced communities (Denver) demonstrate similar numerical estimates of CIF and CBF, as predicted by the mathematical equations. Knowledge of community typology is important in understanding trans-boundary GHG emission contributions.

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Towards standardization in GHG quantification and reporting

April 2014 · Carbon Management

The requirement to tackle anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has become increasingly urgent as understanding of the risks of climate change has advanced. The scientific community has been developing mechanisms to bring about a reduction in the quantities of anthropogenic GHG emissions in order that responsibility for anthropogenic climate forcing may be equitably assigned and specific, ... [Show full abstract] pragmatic emissions reduction targets can be set and progress measured. The ‘carbon footprint’ is increasingly being recognised as a valuable indicator in the field of GHG emissions management. For ease of application the definition the “carbon footprint” has been limited to the inclusion of emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) by Wright et al. (2011). However, in some cases a more complete measure is needed that includes the full array of Kyoto “basket” GHGs – CO2, CH4, nitrous oxide (N2O), sulphur hexafluoride (SF6), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs). Outside of the academic literature the conventional approach is to term this metric a “GHG inventory” (UN, 1998; Ranganathan et al., 2004). However, in the academic literature the term “GHG inventory” has been used to account for various different collections of GHGs and other climate-influencing gases, leading to confusion over the definition of the “GHG inventory”. Consequently, an alternative term, the “climate footprint”, has been proposed (Wiedmann and Minx, 2008; Wright et al., 2011) which aims to eliminate this confusion. The question is: should we continue using the commonly-used term, “GHG inventory”, and endeavour to impose and promote a strict definition or should we introduce a new, rigorously defined term, the “climate footprint”

Article

Rank-order concordance among conflicting emissions estimates for informing flight choice

January 2017 · Transportation Research Part D Transport and Environment

Air transport Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions estimates differ greatly, depending on the calculation method employed. Among the IPCC, ICAO, DEFRA, and BrighterPlanet calculation methods, the largest estimate may be up to 4.5 times larger than the smallest. Such heterogeneity – and ambiguity over the true estimate – confuses the consumer, undermining the credibility of emissions estimates in ... [Show full abstract] general. Consequently, GHG emissions estimates do not currently appear on the front page of flight search-engine results. Even where there are differences between alternative flights’ emissions, this information is unavailable to consumers at the point of choice. When external considerations rule out alternative travel-modes, the relative ranking of flight options’ GHG emissions is sufficient to inform consumers’ decision making. Whereas widespread agreement on a gold standard remains elusive, the present study shows that the principal GHG emissions calculation methods produce consistent rankings within specific route-structure classes. Hence, for many consumers, the flight identified as most GHG efficient is not sensitive to the specific calculation method employed. But unless GHG emissions information is displayed at the point of decision, it cannot enter into consumers’ decision making. A credible and ambiguity-free alternative would thus be to display GHG ranking information on the front page of flight search-engine results.

Article

Implementing Trans‐Boundary Infrastructure‐Based Greenhouse Gas Accounting for Delhi, India

December 2012 · Journal of Industrial Ecology

Community‐wide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions accounting is confounded by the relatively small spatial size of cities compared to nations—due to which, energy use in essential infrastructures serving cities, such as commuter and airline transport, energy supply, water supply, wastewater infrastructures, and others, often occurs outside the boundaries of the cities using them. The trans‐boundary ... [Show full abstract] infrastructure supply chain footprint (TBIF) GHG emissions accounting method, tested in eight U.S. cities, incorporates supply chain aspects of these trans‐boundary infrastructures serving cities, and is akin to an expanded geographic GHG emissions inventory. This article shows the results from applying the TBIF method in the rapidly developing city of Delhi, India. The objectives of this research are to (1) describe the data availability for implementing the TBIF method within a rapidly industrializing country, using the case of Delhi, India; (2) identify methodological differences in implementation of the TBIF method between Indian versus U.S. cities; and (3) compare broad energy use metrics between Delhi and U.S. cities, demonstrated by Denver, Colorado, USA, whose energy use characteristics and TBIF GHG emissions have previously been shown to be similar to U.S. per capita averages. This article concludes that most data required to implement the TBIF method in Delhi are readily available, and the methodology could be translated from U.S. to Indian cities. Delhi's 2009 community‐wide GHG emissions totaled 40.3 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (t CO 2 ‐eq), which are normalized to yield 2.3 t CO 2 ‐eq per capita; nationally, India reports its average per capita GHG emissions at 1.5 t CO 2 ‐eq. In‐boundary GHG emissions contributed to 68% of Delhi's total, where end use (including electricity) energy in residential buildings, commercial and industrial usage, and fuel used in surface transportation contributed 24%, 19%, and 21%, respectively. The remaining 4% of the in‐boundary GHG emissions were from waste disposal, water and wastewater treatment, and cattle. Trans‐boundary infrastructures were estimated to equal 32% of Delhi's TBIF GHG emissions, with 5% attributed to fuel processing, 3% to air travel, 10% to cement, and 14% to food production outside the city.

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Making sense of methods to audit emissions – various audit methods to estimate dairy production carb...

September 2013 · Advances in Animal Biosciences

A dairy farm greenhouse gas (GHG) model was applied in this study to compare the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) method and the life cycle assessment (LCA) procedure, which are the principal methods for quantifying the carbon footprint of dairy production. The objectives of this paper were to compare the auditing methods in estimating the carbon footprint of grass and confinement ... [Show full abstract] dairy systems and to assess the methods in estimating the footprint of grass-based dairy farms varying in cow genetic potential, stocking rate and level of concentrate feeding. The input data used to operate the model was based on published research studies. The results of the study showed that the IPCC and LCA methods ranked the carbon footprint of dairy systems differently. For example, the IPCC method found that the carbon footprint of the confinement dairy system was 8% lower than the grass system, but the LCA results show that the confinement system increased the carbon footprint by 16%. The comparison of grass-based dairy systems, differing in cow genotype, stocking rate and concentrate fed per cow also showed that the methods did not agree on the ranking of dairy systems carbon footprint. The re-ranking of dairy systems carbon footprint occurred because the IPCC method excludes emissions associated with imported goods, for example, concentrate. Thus, it is incorrect to consider only components of the dairy system relevant for policy reporting such as that used by IPCC when estimating the carbon footprint of dairy produce. Instead, holistic approaches, such as LCA, which consider on and off-farm GHG emissions should be used. Therefore, reform of the present policy framework is required to enable quantification of the impact of mitigation strategies on global emissions. The evaluation of the carbon footprint from grass-based systems differing in cow genotype also demonstrated that selecting cows solely for milk production will increase the carbon footprint of grass-based dairy systems relative to cows selected on a combination of traits, because of reduced cow fertility and thus higher emissions from replacement heifers.

Article

Confusing CAFE Standards

December 2015

Logan Neal

Our homes are one of our most prized possessions, because of the many things it provides. Trying to keep your house from falling apart, can seem like a never ending task. If you neglect these tasks your house can go from a home to a death trap very quickly. While your house is your home, the earth is home to you, your home, along with generation yet to be born. Just like your individual home, the ... [Show full abstract] earth requires tasks to be done to keep it from killing us all. Today addressing the problem of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions needs to be at the top of our docket. While many factors contribute to the problem of GHG emission, I would like to focus on one; transportation. Transportation is responsible for 31% of GHG emissions in the US, second in the standings to electricity who is at 37%. Café standards are the current way the US regulates fuel efficiency, but I believe that there are some major flaws with this. The standards are being decided by two separate agencies and they are heavily influenced by political pressure. The corporate average fuel economy (café) standards come out of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) of 1975, which gave the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) the power to regulate the café standards. The EPCA was not developed for any kind of climate change purpose, but instead was in response to the energy crisis of 1973. The NHTSA made the first café standards in 1978 and were regulated by themselves until 2007. In 2007 the Supreme Court ruled that the environmental protection agency (EPA) has the right to regulate GHG emissions for new cars, this power is derived out of the clean air act. The NHTSA and the EPA put out their first joint decision in 2012. It is very hard to believe that a single standard can be set by two completely separate entities.

Article

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Footprint Score Evaluation Of Process And Transport Of Two Kinds Of Biomass Production

February 2015 · International Journal of Applied Engineering Research

The highest level of biomass production in Spain comes from Galicia and Jaen, the former produces biomass from forestry and the latter, collected by-products from olives. Biomass consumption cuts down on GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions into the atmosphere, since its use for thermal energy production purposes does not generate any emissions. The purpose of this study is to quantify CO 2 emissions ... [Show full abstract] in the production and transport of biomass from forests, as well as that derived from the production of olives, in the Canary Islands. The methodology proposed for work processes in forestry production and consumption takes data from actual emissions in the areas of Pontevedra and Jaen, and considers fundamental aspects from the environmental point of view in order to be as accurate as possible. The performance of machinery, consumption in the forestry process, and transportation distance finally give us the impact of the carbon footprint for comparison with predetermined targets in GHG emissions savings.