a greeneru guide The GreenerU Carbon & Energy Translation Kit kWh?! CO2?! BTUs?! Whaa? TABLE OF CONTENTS • Table of Units • Picturing One Ton of CO2 • What One Ton of Carbon Means • Translation, Please! • Golden Nuggets & Elevator Pitches Carbon and energy terms are frequently used to describe sustain- ability achievements but even the “climate educated” among us can get lost in the jargon. Are you seeking a better understanding of greenhouse gases, tons of carbon dioxide, or kilowatt hours? Do you want to be able to calculate your campus’ carbon and energy impacts, and express them in a way that people will actually understand? This Translation Kit offers some tools and tips to help you translate energy, environmental, or economic abstractions into more concrete and relatable images and concepts. It will enable you to better understand the environmental impact of your campus operations and communicate about those impacts with students, faculty, and staff. a greeneru guide Units When people talk about energy, environment, and climate change, inevitably a lot of units pop up in the dialogue. Units of energy, mass and volume are all part of the jargon. The most important and commonly used units are arranged below in a chart that will help you understand what they mean and how they relate to each other. UNIT SYMBOL USED TO EXPRESS EXPLANATION/EQUIVALENT Important for understanding greenhouse gas emissions Carbon dioxide equivalent Pound Short ton Metric ton Kilogram CO2e Emissions from various greenhouse gases based upon their global warming potential (GWP) Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the base of the global warming potential (GWP) system and has a GWP of 1. All other greenhouse gases’ ability to increase global warming is expressed in terms of CO2. The CO2e for a gas is derived by multiplying the tons of the gas by that gas’s GWP. Commonly expressed as "million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents” (MMTCO2e). lb Emissions 1 pound = 0.0005 short tons 1 pound = 0.00045359237 metric tons ton Emissions, in the US A short ton is equal to 2,000 lbs, 0.907 metric tons, and 907.18474 kg. none Emissions, internationally A metric ton is equal to 2205 lbs, 1.1 short tons, and 1000 kg. kg Emissions 1 kilogram = 0.001 metric tons 1 kilogram = 0.00110231131 short tons Important for understanding energy Kilowatt hour Watt British Thermal Unit kWh Electricity consumption One kWh is equivalent to 1000 watts running for 1 hour. If you left a 100 watt light bulb on for one hour, you would use (100 watts) x (1 kW/1000 watts) x (1 hour) = 0.10 kWh. W Rate of energy conversion A typical household incandescent light bulb has a power rating of 25 to 100 watts; fluorescent lamps typically consume 5 to 30 watts to produce a similar amount of light, while comparable LED lamps use about 0.5 to 6 watts. A Megawatt (MW) is 1 million watts. A typical coal powered power station produces around 600-700 MW. BTU Traditional unit of energy One BTU is approximately 0.293071 W·h (watt hours). 1 watt is approximately 3.41214 BTU/h. 1000 BTU/h is approximately 293.071 W. Commonly expressed as MMBtu, which is one million BTU. Emissions per MMBtu = 0.058 tons of CO2 Important for understanding transportation Gallon 2 gal Gasoline A gallon of gasoline produces 19.4 pounds (or 8.8 kilograms) of CO2.I a greeneru guide PICTURING ONE TON OF CO2 What One Ton of Carbon Means An easy way to picture a ton of carbon dioxide is to picture a football field. Imagine a balloon that has a diameter of 10 yards on that field, with one side on the goal line and the other on the 10 yard line. If you filled that balloon with carbon dioxide, it would weigh about 1 ton; it would be a 1-ton CO2 balloon.II The average American emits a ton of CO2e The average American’s carbon footprint in 2010 is somewhere around 20-28 tons.III So if your carbon footprint is 20 tons of CO2 annually (a conservative estimate), you release two football fields worth of 1-ton CO2 balloons into the Earth’s atmosphere every year. About half of those CO2 balloons will be absorbed into the ocean or trees within a year or two. However, one hundred years from now, almost a fourth of those CO2 balloons will still be overheating the planet. And that’s just your CO2 from one year. Multiply that times all the years of your life (living the way we do now in the U.S.) and then multiply that by the 350+ million people in this country. That’s a lot of football fields of balloons! every two weeks.IV A ton (2,000 pounds) of CO2 is enough to fill: • 1,575,900 soda cansV • A 2,200 square-foot house A ton of CO2 is emitted by: • Driving the average car from Atlanta to Las Vegas (about 2,000 miles) • Powering the average American home for one month • 350 filled garbage bags rotting in a landfill • The average coal power plant over the course of only 9 seconds Emission of one ton of CO2 is avoided by: • Preventing sixty cars from driving for one day • Replacing 3 incandescent light bulbs with CFLs • Growing 40 tropical trees for one year 3 a greeneru guide TRANSLATION, PLEASE! Examples using the EPA GHG Calculator: If You Already Know the Quantity of Emissions 3 CFL bulbs are estimated to save about one ton of CO2 over the life of the bulbs compared to traditional incandescent bulbs. Using 3 CFL bulbs → 1 ton of CO2 saved. If you have gallons of gasoline, kilowatt hours, or number of passenger vehicles, and want to convert those into any of the greenhouse gas units (metric tons, short tons, pounds, or kilograms) or if you already know the quantity of emissions, you can convert that into… • How much an average home emits Plug that into the EPA Calculator and you find out that one ton of CO2 is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from: → 102 gallons of gasoline (enough to do a road trip from Maine to Seattle in a Honda Civic) → 37.8 propane cylinders used for home BBQs → 2 barrels of oil → Carbon sequestered by 23 tree seedlings grown for 10 years • How much average cars emit • Gallons of gasoline • Barrels of oil • Propane tanks used for home BBQs • How much tree seedlings would absorb in ten years • Acres of forest preserved from deforestation • Coal fired power plants • How much avoided from recycling • Any of the other GHG units …using the EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator. If You Don’t Have Emissions Data You can also use the calculator if you know gallons of gasoline, kilowatt hours, therms of natural gas, or number of passenger vehicles. Say you know the wattage of an appliance and want to find out how much carbon is emitted based on average use. The average plasma TV is 300 watts, meaning it takes 300 watts to power the TV for one hour. Operating a 300 watt plasma TV for one hour consumes 0.3 kilowatt hours of electricity. So if your TV is on for 5 hours each day (the national average)VI, here is the annual carbon emissions from your TV: .3 kWh x 5 hrs x 7 days x 52 weeks x .0008 tons of CO2 = .4368 tons of CO2 Plug that into the EPA Calculator and you find out that .4368 tons of CO2 is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from: → Nearly an entire barrel of oil, 0.922 → 44.6 gallons of gasoline → 0.133 tons of waste recycled instead of sending to landfill, which is 266 pounds, the size of a baby elephant. 4 aagreener u guide greeneru GOLDEN NUGGETS & ELEVATOR PITCHES Here are some excellent tidbits of information that you can use to calculate the emissions of energy activities that emit greenhouse gases and translate that information into digestible snippets for use in conversations and communications materials on your campus. • In the U.S., on average, 1.37 pounds CO2 is emitted per kWh consumed, according to the EPA.VII • An Energy Star qualified compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) will save about $30 over its lifetime and pay for itself in about 6 months. It uses 75% less energy and lasts about 10 times longer than an incandescent bulb. • If the thermostats in every house in America were lowered 1 degree Fahrenheit during the winter, the nation would save 230 million barrels of crude oil—enough to fill an oil tanker 400 times (almost equal to the amount of crude oil that the U.S. imports every month).VIII • Heating a house produces about four tons of carbon dioxide per year on a national average. Electricity use in the average house produces eight tons. • If every American household turned off the lights for one hour they would prevent more than 16,610 tons of carbon dioxide from being released—enough to fill every hot-air balloon at the annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta seven times.IX • The average household emits 5 tons of CO2 per year, and the international electricity consumption rate is 1.5 lbs of CO2 per kWh. I Environmental Protection Agency. http://www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/420f05004.htm ii Bill Chameides in “Basic Science of Global Warming”, Environmental Defense Fund Blog. http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/2007/02/20/picturing-a-ton-of-co2/ iii Conservation International says it is 27 tons. Carbon Fund says it is 25 tons. Brighter Planet claims it is 28 tons. U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works carbon calculator claims it is 20 tons. iv Brighter Planet. http://brighterplanet.com/entries/26-how_big_is_a_ton_of_co2 v Based on 12 fluid ounces in a soda can and volume of 1 tons of CO2 from International Carbon Bank and Exchange. http://www.icbe.com/carbondatabase/CO2volumecalculation.asp vi Nielsen Three Screen Report Q1 2010. http://en-us.nielsen.com/content/nielsen/en_us/insights/ nielsen_a2m2_three.html vii Environmental Protection Agency. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/ind_assumptions.html viii Energy Information Administration and Delta Sky Magazine March 2008 issue. ix Delta Sky Magazine March 2008 issue. x Roanoke Valley Cool Cities Coalition. http://rvccc.org/rvccc-cfl.html#_How_are_compact. xi EPA WaterSense Program xii Brighter Planet. http://brighterplanet.com/personal-actions/11-drip-dry-the-dishes • If every household in American replaced one light bulb with a 60-watt equivalent CFL, the energy saved would be: X - enough to power a city of 1.5 million people, or - enough to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island, or - equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads, or - enough electricity saved to turn off two entire power plants—or skip building the next two • A household could save 300 kilowatt hours of electricity annually by installing efficient showerheads. This is enough to power its television for about a year.XI • You can reduce your dishwasher’s energy use by about 7% by skipping the heated dry cycle. The dishes don’t need it —they’ll dry fine if you just crack the door open after the dishwasher finishes. Every time you do this, you will reduce emissions by an estimated 0.7 lbs. CO2e.XII © 2010 GreenerU, Inc. About GreenerU From comprehensive energy efficiency programs to behavioral change initiatives, GreenerU partners with colleges and their students to solve the campus sustainability and energy management challenges of today and tomorrow. GreenerU, Inc. One Moody Street Waltham, MA 02453-5339 tel 781 891 3750 Info@GreenerU.com www.GreenerU.com