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HUMA-311-02Engineering CommunicationRecommendation ReportEstimating Carbon Footprint of a FamilyPioneers team:Mohamed Aldhalei 45621Saif Alqubaisi 44394Abdurrahman Almusawa 45049Submitted to Dr. Robert CraigSummer2019Submission: 11th July 2019EXECUTIVE SUMMARRYThe introduction shows brief summary of the request we got from the client, and some background information followed by our scope and organization of the report.Problem statement states the request submitted to our team that we responded to it.Background information about causes and methods of calculation and reduction of carbon footprint based on the literature review. Scope and focus of our report that represents our research anization of the report and its main ideas.PROCESS OF ESTIMATING THE CARBON FOOTPRINTIdentifying the electrical appliances that causes the biggest amounts of carbon emissions. Estimating the power consumption of each electrical appliance.Estimating the carbon footprint by using online calculator.Conclusion and recommendation contain a short summary of the report. 3.1. Conclusion provides a brief overview of the report and the importance behind it. 3.2. Recommendation lists suggestions to further help in reducing carbon footprint of a family based on our results. 5996940348615i.i.Table of Contents:1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………...……………………… 11.1 Problem statement …………………………………………………………...... 11.2 Background based on literature review ……………….……………………..... 11.3 Scope and Focus …………………………………………………….….……... 11.4 Organization …………………………………………………….….…………. 22. PROCESS OF ESTIMATING THE CARBON FOOTPRINT ……….………... 22.1 Identifying the electrical appliance ……………………….…………………… 22.2 Estimating the power consumption …………………………….……………… 32.3 Estimating the carbon footprint ………………………………………………... 53. CONCLUSIONS (AND RECOMMENDATIONS) ……………......................... 7 3.1 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………...……… 73.2 Recommendations ……………………………………….….…………………. 8References ………………………………………………………….…………….... 9-10List of Figures:Figure 1: Power Consumption Percentage Of The Major Electrical Appliances ……. 5Figure 2: Online Calculator ………………………………….….…………………… 6 Figure 3: The Monthly Carbon Footprint ……………………………….….………... 6List of Tables:Table 1: Total power consumption of the major electrical appliances ……….……...... 45878830541655ii.ii.Table 2: List of recommendations…………………………………………...………... 71. INTRODUCTION:1.1 Problem statementThe purpose of this report is to help in reducing housing’s carbon footprint in Abu Dhabi by suggesting some ways. This is in response to client’s request to estimate the monthly carbon footprint of a typical family in Abu Dhabi and identify the most contributed activities and suggest ways to reduce it. 1.2 Background (and brief literature review)The carbon emission and footprint has been a really serious issue in the past decades that had a lot of negative impacts on the environment. Our focus is on causes, methods of calculation and methods of reduction of carbon footprint. According to [1] consumer’s contribution to the carbon footprint is divided into housing and mobility.?[2] states that the most common way to estimate carbon footprint is to use the online calculators. [3] say that timely recording and reporting of energy consumption allows users to control their consumption and save electricity. According to [4] carbon emissions are being received due to the predominant use of grid systems to produce electricity. Another study [5] states that regular grid energy consumption is adversely affecting the environment. [6] Stated that over the last century waste emission reached a point where it’s faster than the earth’s ability to regenerate. The world must really take this issue seriously and we should all cooperate to come up with the best ways to reduce carbon emission.1.3 Scope and FocusOur project is limited to estimate the carbon footprint caused by the daily activities of the family due to the lack of information about other activities like travelling and construction of houses. We focused on the most used electric appliances such as: air conditioners, televisions, water heaters, microwaves and clothes dryer. Other contributors that we considered are coal and gas cylinders due to their high usage by families. Because of our lack of experience and time, the chemical reactions that cause the production of the gases are not considered.610806545720111.4 Organization of reportThis report discusses the main aspects of carbon footprint reduction inside houses. The report starts with listing main contributors in carbon footprint. In addition, it will provide the electric consumption of each contributed appliances. The estimated carbon footprint of a typical family in Abu Dhabi is also provided. We end this report with a conclusion followed by recommendations to reduce housing’s carbon footprint amount.2. PROCESS OF ESTIMATING THE CARBON FOOTPRINT: 2.1 Identifying the electrical appliances: 6219825412623022In the beginning of our research to estimate the carbon footprint of typical family in Abu Dhabi and suggest methods to reduce it, a list of household appliances was created. We aimed to create this list to find the monthly expenditure of each appliances and the total monthly expenditure of the appliances, then convert it to CO2 equivalent at later point. Which will lead us to find an estimation of the amount of carbon footprint of those household appliances. We specified the number of the typical family to 8 members, which is the average number of a family in Abu Dhabi. The list made contained five major appliances, which are Air conditioning systems, Televisions, Microwaves, water heaters and clothes dryers. We focused while creating this list to choose the appliances that produce the most significant amount of CO2 emissions, which means to pick the appliances that are mostly used during the day and acquires high energy to work. In addition to that we tried to pick the appliances that exist a lot in families houses in Abu Dhabi that the people cannot give up, which is the reason to choose the ACs and TVs. Almost every room in a house in Abu Dhabi has at least one AC and one TV for every two rooms, so for an average house of four rooms it would have four ACs and two TVs. It is obvious that families need ACs a lot because of the high temperatures of the summer in Abu Dhabi. As for the other appliances chosen which can be classified as heaters or that produce heat, they are used a lot as well in houses. In every bathroom in a house, there must be a water heater to heat water in the winter or to cool it down in the summer alternatively. In addition, every kitchen reasonably needs microwaves and for food and beverage heating or cocking. By taking in considerations to all these reasons, we have agreed on those five main appliances because they produce huge amount of CO2 emissions indirectly to the air by electricity consumption. Besides those appliances, our research also has some estimations to the amount of CO2 emissions that are produced by the burning of coal and gas cylinders that are used in houses, which cause the production of CO2 emissions directly to the air. 2.2 Estimating the power consumption:Families contribution to the carbon footprint in Abu Dhabi is mainly caused by the misuse of electrical appliances in the house daily. Many electrical appliances work for hours when they are not needed leading to an unnecessary production of CO2 emission. For instance, leaving an air conditioner switched on for a whole day will require a lot of electricity. The electricity will be provided from electricity generator which require a huge amount of CO2 to be produced. Studies and researches made on a typical family of 8 members (Table 1) shows the power consumption per month of each of the 5 major contributing electrical appliances. It is calculated by multiplying the typical running time of a single appliance by the power consumption, also known as Wattage, which could be found either from the back every electrical appliance or from the internet. Electrical Appliance Power Consumption Formula:Power Consumption=Wattage×Time5995035-20447033Table 1: Total power consumption of the major electrical appliances ApplianceTypical Running Time Per month(hours)Power consumption (W/h)Total Power Consumption Per Month(kW)Air Conditioner 6001000600TV45010045Water Heater904000360Microwave901200108Clothes Dryer605000300The monthly total power consumption of a household can be calculated by multiplying the number of each electrical appliance by its total power consumption per month. By assuming that there are 8 air conditioners, 2 televisions, 8 water heater, 1 microwave and 1 clothes dryer in every house in Abu Dhabi, the total power consumption per month of the typical home electrical appliances will be:600 x 8 = 4800 kWh for air conditioners45 x 2 = 90 kWh for televisions360 x 8 = 2880 kWh for water heaters108 x 1 = 108 kWh for a microwave300 x 1 = 300 kWh for a clothes dryerTotal power consumption of a household formula:(number of devices×monthly consumption)The sum of the power consumption of all the major appliances is the total power consumption of a typical household in Abu Dhabi and it is 8178 kWh.611251062103044Figure 1 shows that air conditioners are the main power consumers followed by water heaters. This shows that the hot weather in Abu Dhabi is the main reason of the high consumption of electricity. left41910000Figure 1: Power Consumption Percentage of the Major Electrical Appliances2.3 Estimating the carbon footprint:There are many methods to calculate carbon footprint. According to [1] the best method to calculate carbon footprint is using the online calculators that give users a very near estimation of carbon footprint, most of which is due to the usage of different appliances which consume electricity. Besides that, we also need to consider the usage of coal and gas cylinders. A typical Abu Dhabi family uses charcoal is used for barbeque and ‘dakhon’ as perfume for clothes and home. This needs about two 50kg bags of coal per month. Gas cylinders are used for cooking stoves. Each family uses approximately three 25Ibs cylinder per month, which is about 17.4 US gallons monthly. 62236352286055Using the online calculator, we converted the electrical consumption of each appliance to carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) using the electricity conversion factor which is equal to 0.4382. This factor differs for each country and it’s provided by the energy provider of the country as shown in Figure 2.17113251397000Figure 2: Figure 3:106045635000 621919087884066According to our calculation the total monthly carbon footprint of a typical family in Abu Dhabi is 3.97 metric tons of CO2e. A study [7] showed that the annual average household’s carbon footprint in UK is 17.1 metric tons of CO2e. This is equivalent to 1.425 metric tons of CO2e per month, which means that Abu Dhabi’s average household’s carbon footprint is one of the highest in the world. As showing in figure2 air conditioners have the most contribution in the carbon footprint amount. Water heaters are also can be classified as one of the main reasons of having a high carbon footprint. Televisions, microwaves are the least contributed appliances. The carbon footprint amounts which is produced by clothes dryer, coal and gas cylinders are reasonable. 3.1 CONCLUSIONS (AND RECOMMENDATIONS): 3.2 Conclusion:This research was written in response to the client request to find an estimation of the carbon footprint of a typical family, identify the contributed activities and suggest methods to reduce it. We were excited as researchers to participate in solving this issue as it became so serious and causes a lot of negative impacts on the environment in recent years. According to our results and findings we tried our best to provide efficient, practical and unexpansive solutions that we hope it would be improved and applied by the authorities. The region of our study was limited in one typical family in Abu Dhabi, so a lot of other important factors that plays big role in producing carbon emissions was neglected. Those other factors must be studied and researched as well in different researches in the future, to analyze this issue from a bigger region.3.2 Recommendations: As requested by the client we have to suggest some recommendations to reduce the overall carbon footprint contribution. Table 3 below shows a list of our suggested recommendations. 6223635260223077Table 2:Recommendation 1:Add the CO2e number to the electric billRecommendation 2:Discount the electric bill for low carbon footprint contributorsRecommendation 3:Fee on the high carbon footprint contributor Recommendation 4:Automatic switch-off sensors Recommendation 5: Social media awareness Recommendation 1: Providing the number of CO2e (Carbon Dioxide equivalent) will give an idea to the consumers of how much they are affecting the environment badly. The high number of the CO2e will encourage the families to reduce their consumption of electricity and other activities that contribute to the carbon footprint. Recommendation 2: Due to the high hot climate of Abu Dhabi, a lot of electricity is required for cooling. Since our researches showed that cooling requires the highest amount of electricity, we think that the standard number of carbon footprint should be 2.5 metric ton CO2e. Our suggestion is to give a discount as a reward for the families that produce less than that amount. The discount will encourage the families to reduce their consumption. Recommendation 3: Although many families will be encouraged by the discount, many families would rather not reduce their carbon footprint. Our suggestion in the situation is to apply a fee on the families that produce an amount more than 3.5 CO2e. This will force the families to reduce their consumption.Recommendation 4: A huge amount of electricity is used and wasted when no one uses it. Switching off electrical appliances will save a lot of electricity therefore reduce the carbon footprint. Using artificial intelligence, electrical appliances could be automatically switched off when they are not being used. Our suggestion is to support the companies that sell these systems and make them affordable for the families.628650068834088Recommendation 5: Reducing the carbon footprint depend mostly on the consumers awareness. Our suggestion is to make awareness campaigns on social media to raise the awareness and to make the families more concerned about the dangers of their contribution to the carbon footprint.REFERENCES:[1] M. Sipple, D. Meyer and N. Scholliers, "What about greenhouse gas emissions from students? An analysis of lifestyle and carbon footprints at the University of Applied Science in Konstanz, Germany,"?Carbon Management, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 201-211, 2018. Available:??[2]?J. Ross, N. Shantharam and B. Tomlinson, "Collaborative filtering and carbon footprint calculation,"?in Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology, 17-19 May, 2010, Arlington, USA.?Available:?[3] A. Toma, C. Gheorghe, F. Neac?u and A. Dumitrescu, “Conversion of smart meter data in user-intuitive carbon footprint information,” in proceeding of the 5th International Symposium on Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Oct. 2017, Galati, Romania. [Online] Available:?[4] J. Rootzén and F. Johnsson, "Paying the full price of steel – perspectives on the cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the steel industry,"Energy Policy, vol. 98, pp. 459-469, 2016. Available:??[5] M. Bello, S. Solarin and Y. Yen, "The impact of electricity consumption on CO2 emission, carbon footprint, water footprint and ecological footprint: The role of hydropower in an emerging economy, "?Journal of Environmental Management, vol. 219, pp. 218-230, 2018.?[6]?A. Galli, T. Wiedmann, E. Ercin, D. Knoblauch, B. Ewing and S. Giljum, “Integrating Ecological, Carbon and Water footprint into a “Footprint Family” of indicators: Definition and role in tracking human pressure on the planet,” in?sciencedirect, vol 16, May. 2012. [Online]. Available:![7] M. Buchs and S. Schnepf, "UK Households’ Carbon Footprint: A Comparison of the Association between Household Characteristics and Emissions from Home Energy, Transport and Other Goods and Services," IZA, Bonn, 2013. Available: ................
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