Report on Greenhouse Calculator

Report on Greenhouse Calculator

Introduction: The Greenhouse Calculator is a program that calculates a person's annual greenhouse gas emissions from everyday activities such as washing dishes and watching TV. The program guides the user through a series of questions relating to the everyday or weekly use of certain household related items including; transport, hot water, heating, cooling, refrigeration, cooking, lighting, clothes drying, other appliances and waste. Once the Annual household greenhouse gas emissions were recorded, different options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions were explored.

The results for my Greenhouse calculation are as follows:

Greenhouse gas

(tonnes CO2) Energy costs

(dollars) NOx

(grams)

CO

(grams) VOCs

(grams) Particulates

(grams) SOx

(grams)

Transport 10.2303 3631.47 14.7051 251.4268 25.3993 0.3673 0.9166

Hot Water 2.4053 344.84 0.2041 0.0559 0.0097 0.0164 0.1740

Heating 4.9126 710.49 0.2375 0.0915 0.0187 0.0253 0.0010

Cooling 0.0247 3.13 0.0141 0.0021 0.0002 0.0007 0.0255

Refrigeration 1.7176 217.60 0.9771 0.1449 0.0124 0.0495 1.7670

Cooking 0.5207 71.38 0.1391 0.0241 0.0027 0.0079 0.2251

Lighting 0.4187 53.04 0.2382 0.0353 0.0030 0.0121 0.4307

Clothes Drying 0.8906 112.83 0.5067 0.0751 0.0064 0.0257 0.9162

Other Appliances 1.8400 233.11 1.0468 0.1552 0.0133 0.0530 1.8929

Waste 1.0506 0.00 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000

TOTAL 24.0110 5377.90 18.0687 252.0109 25.4656 0.5576 6.3490

Discussion of results: After looking at the results, I identified some key areas with fairly high greenhouse gas emissions that I thought I could reduce. The key areas were: Transport (10.2303 tonnes of CO2), Hot Water (2.4053 tonnes of CO2), Lighting (0.4187 tonnes of CO2), Clothes Drying (0.8906 tonnes of CO2) and other Appliances (1.8400 tonnes of CO2).

I looked at my household usage of public transport, and decided that I could cut down the number of tram trips per week, from 1-5 to 0. This change saw a 0.15% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions from transport.

I noticed after a week of observation, that my household does too many loads of washing. By waiting until there is a full load of washing before starting the machine, the greenhouse gas emissions from hot water usage went down by 11.58%.

If lights were turned off when a room was vacated, instead of being left on for hours unnecessarily, the number of low voltage lights used for more than two hours per day would halve. This change resulted in a 43.35% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions from lighting.

It really wasn't necessary to use the clothes dryer during summer. So cutting out the use of the dryer during summer saw a 14.36% decrease in the greenhouse gas emissions from clothes drying.

In an attempt to cut down on the amount of emissions from watching TV, I decided to read a book or go for a walk instead of watching it. However, this