Assignment 1 Personal Energy Footprint

Assignment 1: Impact Logbook – 2015

Appendix 1

1. Personal Energy – Electricity Footprint

Based on my collected data, the energy consumption for my refrigerator alone is approximately 38% of the average energy consumption per day. (The energy consumption of the refrigerator is the highest).

On the day in which I decided to use the washing machine and the dryer, my average energy consumption approximately increased by a factor of 2 from the average energy consumption of my normal daily routine.

Energy saving and conservation potentials:

Using energy more efficiently can be an effective way for households to save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also defer the need to develop new sources of energy. The Government has set a target

Personal Mobility Footprint

Transportation is an ever-growing sector in our society today. Because of the bustling city life we have today, most of us use transportation means to get from one place to another. Generally, road transportation comprised of nearly 40% of all energy sector emissions. While road transports in 2012 were up by 68% over 1990 levels, the trend has been flat ever since 2007. This flat trend in transport activity combined with improving efficiency. Transport of passenger and freight by rail is less carbon intensive than by road (Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment New Zealand 1 and 6)

Wellington is indeed a busy city life. However, most of us use walking as our means to get to our destination. This causes our carbon footprint emission from our personal mobility to be very low. Based on my personal mobility footprint, it can be seen that most of the days, my CO2 emission is zero because I am walking majority of the time. The day when CO2 is emitted in my footprint is when I decide to use the city bus. Nevertheless, when I consider the use of air travel in my annual figure, my carbon footprint increased substantially. However, my use of air travel is only limited to a few times a

By engaging ourselves to more eco-friendly transportation means such as walking and biking, we can substantially reduce the impact of our mobility footprint towards the environment.

Limitations

My actual CO2 emission will deviate from my calculated value because of the constraint of the quality of data I obtain. The average carbon dioxide emission factor (CO2-e per kg) that I incorporated in my table may not be an actual representation of that in reality and this will affect my overall accuracy of my calculated value. Apart from that, due to the fact that I cannot complete ascertain how much more am I going to travel in the upcoming months (I may be using the bus more often or make unexpected train/air travels), the figure of my carbon footprint will vary from its actual value, questioning its accuracy once