The US in 2018 had a record high energy consumption of 101.3 Quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) then when comparing this to the US consumption of energy in 2020 there was a decrease to 92.94 quadrillions British thermal units. When doing the math this was actually a decay factor of 0.0825. I found that this was interesting that our energy consumption in the US actually decreased during the Covid shutdown. However when I think about it a large part of energy consumption comes from office buildings, factories, and such which were shut down during this time. Reducing your energy consumption is important on an individual level and can have a large effect on your carbon footprint.
Sustainable Carbon Emissions
Carbon Dioxide emissions are crucial to address when concerning climate change and global warming. Industrial Revolutions have been occurring for about 200 years and are still happening in countries today. Carbon emissions contribute to the overall heating of the Earth, the IPCC has made goals to try to limit heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius over the pre-industrial level. If our emissions continue on the trend they’re on we will pass by the 1.5-degree mark quickly. According to the Mauna Loa Record Keeling Curve in 1960 the carbon concentration levels were at about 315ppm fast forward to 2020 where it reached about 415ppm. That’s an overall change of 100ppm, 32% increase, growth factor of 1.32, and an average rate of change of 1.67ppm/yr. It’s difficult to enforce and make policies to ensure fair and equal emission standards. There’s a lot of debate over levels and who should be held responsible for the emissions and countries have to be able to industrialize as well. But there is a lot of promise in the renewable energy field. Many innovations, jobs, and decreased use of carbon would result in helping decrease the concentration levels from contributing to the warming of the Earth.
https://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/graphics_gallery/mauna_loa_record/mauna_loa_record.html
CO2 Emissions Rise
Continuing a blog topic from 2 posts ago, I wanted to zero in on the rise in CO2 emissions during my lifetime. I was born in 2002, where global CO2 emissions were 26.04 billion tonnes. Fast forward to our most recent data, with the 2021 global CO2 emissions were 36.4 billion tonnes. That’s a total change of 10.36 billion tonnes. The percent change of that data would roughly be a 40% (39.78%, to be exact) increase with a growth factor of 1.4.
While there has been some fluctuation in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, on average the increase in emissions has remained steady. It’s scary to think about, but the total change, percent change, and growth factor could all possibly be even larger if the pandemic hadn’t happened. It’s important to reduce our personal, every day CO2 emissions, and hopefully we’ll live to see a time where the CO2 emissions have a decay factor instead.
Sources:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/
Livestock and Sustainability
As a society, we eat a lot of food but are only beginning to understand the bi-products of producing meat on such a large scale. Emissions related to the livestock industry are carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4), and ammonia (NH3). Livestock and the food industry are a big contributing factor to climate change and I think that there isn’t enough attention to how the industry is impacting the environment. Due to such a high demand for cattle, researchers believe that the increased cattle rearing will help produce 565 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2030. The livestock industry is responsible for 68% of enterogenic nitrous oxide emissions, 64% of total ammonia emissions, and 35–40% of methane emissions worldwide. Methane is a 23-1 greater potential to warm the planet compared to carbon dioxide. I want to look into this topic more because I feel like this is a big issue and I am not very familiar with it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6518108/#:~:text=Livestock%20emit%20almost%2064%25%20of,40%25%20of%20methane%20emissions%20worldwide.
Offshore Wind Turbines in California
The state of California is home to 840accessible miles of coast line to the Pacific Ocean. In recent years, as technologies and climate change awareness have increased, the state of California have made a conscious effort to enhance and improve their usage of the coast in its application of renewable energy sources. The most effective form of renewable energy that California has used is taking advantage of the offshore wind. The major tool to capture off shore wind to harness renewable energy comes in the form of wind turbines. Most of which can be built to stand in shallow ocean water. With Californias pacific being much deeper, the turbines must be constructed on to floating stands that are able to absorb currents and other sorts of natural causes that otherwise may alter their movements.
In 2018, the 100 Percent Clean Energy Act was implemented into the state of California. This increased California’s goal of renewable energies to 60% by 2030 and a hopeful 100% by 2045. With oil resources becoming harder to capture and other things such as gas increasing in price, renewable energy sources are the trends of the future. One thing that will not change anytime soon is there being wind off of California’s coastline. If California gets to its goal of 100% by 2045, there will be no energy sources that produce carbon in hopes of altering the curve we viewed a few weeks ago.
https://www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/topics/renewable-energy/offshore-renewable-energy
https://www.energy.ca.gov/sb100
Sustainability and Energy Conservation
One of the first things that has come to my mind on the topic of sustainability is the concept of energy conservation. This can be accomplished in many ways, and through many different forms. For example, some ways to conserve energy could be turning off the lights when you are not home, turning down the heat in the winter at night time or turning down the air conditioner om the summer when you go to bed. These simple things can make a large impact on your own personal footprint. For the purpose of this blog we will focus on the amount of energy that can be saved by simply turning off the lights. Lets say that a incandescent light bulb is graded for 60 watts. This light bulb will use approximately .06 kilowatts of energy per hour while it is on. Over time this adds up not only in energy use but also in money to pay the bill. If you were to turn off that bulb there would be a 100% decrease in energy obviously, with a decay factor of 1.0. This seems like it is so obvious, yet not enough of us are doing this. In the long run turning off your bulb is not only incredibly helpful for the environment but also for your wallet. When thinking about sustainability it is the little things that we have to do that will make an impact. If we are able to do the small things like I have listed above it will be beneficial for all.
Greenhouse Gases and our Sustainability Efforts
Greenhouse gases contribute to many dangers in sustainability efforts and these greenhouse gases have been closely monitored by the EPA, with the government organization monitoring the rises and sinks of greenhouse gas emissions and the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. I believe that sustainability efforts should first and foremost look to reduce the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions that we are placing into the world. The US emissions totaled 5,222 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents in 2020. This is an 11% decrease from 2019 with the total change from 2019 to 2020 decreasing from 5796.42 million metric tons to 5222 metric tons. This resulted in a 574.42 million metric ton decrease in CO2 emissions. This was largely due to the pandemic as well as the continued search for more renewable and sustainable forms of energy.
One interesting topic I found regarding sustainability GHG emissions, especially CO2 emissions is electric cars. While electric cars are better for the environment, the deciding factor on the sustainability is how much is required to produce these electric cars. An all electric Chevrolet Bolt produces 189 grams of CO2 for every mile, as opposed to a gas fueled Toyota which produces 385 grams of CO2 per mile. However the challenge comes in the production of electric cars and the energy grid. It is important to understand that just because a car is electric might not mean it is as sustainable as it seems. This issue concerning electric cars relates back to my main point earlier about greenhouse gas emissions. We as people need to look to find the best possible solutions to decrease the harm we are doing to our planet.
Works Cited:
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-sinks
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#colorbox-hidden
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/climate/electric-vehicles-environment.html
Deforestation and the Consequences
Deforestation has become a serious problem in the past few decades. Forests around the world have been destroyed due to increased demands for lumber supply, as well as many other resources. Many people don’t know how important forests are to the ecosystem, however. Forests “help people thrive and survive by, for example, purifying water and air” as well as by “soaking up carbon dioxide” (worldwildlife.org). Recently, more attention has been placed on forests because of the raging wildfires that we saw in the Amazon rainforest as well as in Australia. It is essential that we maintain the integrity of our rainforests because it is the habitat for millions of animals, as well as a supplier of jobs for millions of people. Unfortunately “in the Amazon, around 17% of the forest has been lost in the last 50 years” (Worldwildlife.org). If this continues, a vital part of our ecosystem will be destroyed in the next centuries. When we talk about the huge amount of land that is being destroyed, many people have a difficult time visualizing exactly how much it is. To put it into perspective, “In 2019, the tropics lost close to 30 soccer fields’ worth of trees every single minute” (Worldwildlife.org). This is an incredibly large amount of land. By saving the forests, we are really saving ourselves. We need to put more emphasis on the conservation of resources and realize that although the earth is tenacious, we may do damage that is not reversible.
Works Cited:
https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation#:~:text=Deforestation%20is%20a%20particular%20concern,forest%20conversion%20for%20cattle%20ranching.
Metal+Glass Recycling in the USA
Using a similar set of statistics as some of my peers, I thought about the topic of sustainability, and so a question I asked myself is: what’s in my environment that I can potentially reuse. Two types of material I come to find I use often include: glass especially when I think of my phone, what I use to drink, windows etc. The second one I often use is metal whether that be my phone, my car, my speaker etc. From 1960-2018, the epa estimates that the total change in glass recycling amounted to approximately: 2,960,000 tons. In that same time stretch, total change in the amount of metal recycled amounted to 8,670,000 tons. The growth factor for glass was about 30.6 and for metal it was about 174.4. The Percentage Change for glass is then: 3060% and for metals it was 17440%. When calculating the rate of change for glass: 2.96 x 10^6/58= 51034.48 tons more of glass was recycled per year and for metals it was: 8.76 x 10^6/58= 151034.48 tons more of metal recycled per year.
Glass recycling on the surface may sound like a good idea, but I decided to dig a little deeper into the materials recycling controversy surrounding its overall utility. According to various websites disputing the overall eco-friendliness of the material, glass is “endlessly” recyclable yet bottles/jars etc. require more energy to manufacture and then recycle and process into sand or reprocess into reusable glass than it takes to reuse plastic. However, plastics’ lifetime utility decreases after a few years whereas glass according to some websites is repeatedly reusable. According to one source, for 10% of broken down glass getting recycled (per year) total energy costs to break it down reduces by 3%. This controversy makes me reevaluate the short-term and long term impacts, in other words, the opportunity cost not just on the good itself, but the lifetime impact of the consumption of the good and its future ramifications on an interconnected issue like carbon emissions.
Works cited:
https://earth.org/glass-bottles-environmental-impact/
https://www.britglass.org.uk/our-work/recycling
https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/glass-recycling-US-broken/97/i6
https://earth911.com/business-policy/how-many-times-recycled/
Europes goal climate neutrality
When I think of sustainability the first that comes to mind is carbon neutrality. “Carbon neutrality means having a balance between emitting carbon and absorbing carbon from the atmosphere in carbon sinks.”(European parliament). I am addressing a company named European Green Deal by the European Commission which aims to make Europe climate neutral by 2050 by enforcing laws by the EU Legislations(European parliament). Data shows that the decay factor is 9.5-11 gt while the growth factor is 38 Gt. The percentage change is decreasing by -.75(9.5-38/38) and -27/28(11-38/38). This decrease is due to the natural carbon sink because no unnatural carbon sinks are able to remove carbon from the atmosphere at a significant scale to fight global warming the co2 emission will increase. Nonetheless, the rate of change demonstrates the amount of co2 released in the atmosphere is 27 and 28.5 annually (27-28.5).
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20190926STO62270/what-is-carbon-neutrality-and-how-can-it-be-achieved-by-2050
