Footprint Investigative Report:
A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact your activities have on the earth system, with a particular reference to climate change. As such, it relates to the quantity of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation etc. The carbon footprint is a measurement of all greenhouse gases we individually produce and has units of tonnes (or kg) of carbon dioxide equivalent. A carbon footprint is made up of the sum of two parts, the primary footprint (shown by the green slices of the pie chart) and the secondary footprint (shown as the yellow slices).
1. The primary footprint is a measure of our direct emissions of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels including domestic energy consumption and transportation (e.g. car and plane). We have direct control of these.
2. The secondary footprint is a measure of the indirect CO2 emissions from the whole lifecycle of products we use – those associated with their manufacture and eventual breakdown. To put it very simply – the more we buy the more emissions will be caused on our behalf.
In this investigation you are going to examine some aspects of your Carbon Footprint as well as gain understanding about the flow of energy and other forms of capital within the Earth system.
This assignment comprises of three essential elements;
1. Collect and present data showing your C footprint- to include both:
a. Your 7-day primary C footprint
b. Your 7-day secondary carbon footprint.
2. Write a report on the C footprint of the UK
3. Summarise, in your own words the research paper “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth” by Boulding. The .pdf of the article is available from the Earth Blackboard site.
To collect data that reflects your PRIMARY and SECONDARY carbon footprints over a 7-day period you will first need to decide what things contribute to the different components of your primary and secondary footprint (consumable items that you use in your day to day life). Think careful about how you can best gather and analyse this information. It may not be as straightforward as it first seems! You should present these findings in the form of tables and/or diagrams.
To help you get started I have listed some key tasks that you should do during your investigation. These are;
1. Investigate the link between energy and carbon management.
2. Describe what is meant by ‘Carbon Footprint’
3. Explain the energy you use in your everyday life (this will be quite complex).
4. Research Reading – You are to discover between 3 and 7 journal articles using the UWE Library resources/facilities. These should be peer reviewed journals and these should contribute useful information to your overall investigation. Please note that a simple web search is not acceptable. You are to summarise this information as part of your report, reference it correctly in the report and provide a correctly formatted reference list at the end of your report. Remember that you are looking at energy and relating this to your ‘Carbon Footprint’.
5. Try and Record your Carbon Footprint. For this you will need to keep some kind of diary as accurately as possible, over a period of 7-days (you should include this at the back of your assignment as an appendix).
If you live in communal University accommodation you will need to estimate your direct domestic energy usage as you won’t have direct access to your gas and electricity meter readings. To do this you will need to use the UWE student village data (available through blackboard) to determine your individual domestic energy usage from the student village domestic energy usage data.
6. Check out some available online tools that ‘supposedly’ calculate your Carbon Footprint.
7. Look for other ways that you can calculate your C footprint. Try to calculate your C footprint as accurately as possible!
8. Write a report on the C footprint of the UK. You have been provided with an excel spreadsheet (see blackboard) containing the yearly records of the UK C footprint from 1997 to 2011. You should analyse and summarise the data to highlight how the UK C footprint has changed over this time period (for specific details as to how to do this see section 6 below).
Content and Structure of the Assignment:
The style of your report should be impersonal. That is, you should avoid the use of personal words such as I, me, we, and you etc. You should use short sentences. Not more than about 15 words per sentence if you can avoid it. You should structure your assignment report in 8 sections.
Section 1: Aims, Objectives and Justification
This section should not exceed 150 words. This section should use the following headings:
1. Main Aim(s) (What is it you are going to do – the three tasks described above)
2. Objectives (How are you going to do it? – e.g. secondary footprint, literature based research)
3. Justification (why is looking at the relationship between energy and carbon management important)
Section 2: Introduction:
This section should not exceed 250 words. In this section you should provide background information and more context to the subject area. More specifically give a brief overview of the key issues regarding energy and carbon management.
This section should underpin the discussion section where you will specifically discuss your findings. You may wish to include some / if not all of your references in this section.
Section 3: Methods:
This section should not exceed 250 words. You should explain how you collected data for your carbon footprint and explain the approach you are taking to analyse the energy data provided. Specifically, you should explain how you have manipulated the energy data that you have analysed. What were your findings?
Section 4: Results & Discussion
This section should not exceed 750 words. Structure the discussion of your data as follows:
Firstly – The results showing your primary footprint.
Secondly – The results showing your secondary footprint.
Thirdly – How the data relates to your underpinning theory you presented at the start.
Finally – How does the data you show answer/address your main aims.
You should include at least TWO Tables and TWO Figures to help you present your data.
You are to decide the best approach for analysing and presenting your Carbon footprint data.
Section 5: Summary of UK C footprint:
The excel spreadsheet “Embedded_emissions_28Nov13” contains 3 tabs.
1. ‘Summary final demand’ indicates the UK Carbon emissions by point of usage.
2. ‘Summary stream’ indicates UK carbon emissions by source area.
3. ‘Metadata’ details the abbreviations and terminology used in the spreadsheet.
Study the data. You may need to make some exploratory plots to visualise trends or highlight areas which have a significant C footprint. When you have identified the most interesting aspects of the dataset you should make some data plots to highlight these. In your final report summarise your findings and illustrate these by including appropriate data figures that you have compiled from the original dataset. Points of interest may include studying in which areas the UK has the largest C footprint; how C usage has changed per sector; whether UK attempts to limit C usage have been successful; C usage/demand changes with time; potential areas of future concern based on current trends etc.
This section should be about 500 words (+data figures)
Section 6: Conclusions:
The main conclusions should not exceed 150 words (about 10 sentences). It should state the main findings factually, numerically and without introducing anything new or making any further discussion.
Section 7: Reference List
A list of references that you have used in the report (remember between 3 and 7 references must be used as outlined). The list should be formatted and presented according to referencing guidelines given in the module guide.