Design and Development of a Carbon Footprint Calculation Model for Universiti Tenaga Nasional

Abstract

Carbon footprint is the amount of a greenhouse gas (GHG) produced as a result of human activities, usually expressed in equivalent kilograms or tons of carbon dioxide (CO2). As the amount of greenhouse gases emission increases, the global temperature increases. In the context of a global awareness of the climate change, carbon footprint has recently become extensively calculated and ways to reduce it are proposed. The purpose of this research is to calculate the amount of carbon footprint discharged by students in College of Engineering (COE), Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN). From this research, a model to calculate the CO2 emission released from the activities done by the COE students particularly, is developed. Literature reviews are done leading to an explanation of what emission categories should be presented in a CO2 calculation for a university. This includes emission sources in the buildings, activities and services in COE particularly. Conducting survey is one of the methods to get the data from the students directly. Besides that, interviews were also done to some of the staffs to get the related data such as the electricity and water consumptions and also paper usage. From this data, the calculation is done and tabulated in the Excel template. By using the template model, the carbon footprint for each or total students of COE can be known. As a result, the total carbon footprint for COE students per year is more than 5,000 tons CO2 e approximately, while each student will produce approximately 1.4 tons CO2 e. Even though the current results are exclusive of other colleges’ students in UNITEN, the developed template model can be used by manipulating the number of students to get more accurate data for the whole UNITEN. This could be included in the future research. By referring to this data, CO2 reduction strategy in COE particularly and UNITEN generally can be proposed.