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Old 10-14-08, 03:19 PM   #1
groar
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Default A reason to save CO2

Hi,

As several people know, I'm lucky enough to eco-drive and change things at home to generate less CO2, saving money is just the good side. I know since a long time that 1 liter of diesel generates 2.66kg of CO2 (for gasoline it's 24.4) and 1 kWh of electricity produces (in France) 60g of CO2 (to be added to 10mg of radioactive wastes...).

But what I discovered this week-end is how much CO2 are absorbed by one tree : 10 kg/year and this is for younger forests, in older forests trees are growing less and so are needing less CO2 : 7kg/year

With our cars, my wife and I are driving 15000 kms each at 5l/100. We are burning 1500 liters of diesel by years and so we are generating 4 tons of CO2 by year. To absorb such a quantity of CO2 we need 400 trees, ie 0.5 hectare

Of course we do not own so many trees... only half a dozen

For the electricity we are consuming 12000 kWh/year, so it's 720 kg of CO2 which corresponds to 72 trees which is roughly 0.1 hectare.

I grew up in the Foret des Landes, one of the biggest forest in Europe : 1 million hectare. We are 60 millions in France and there isn't 30 millions hectare of forest in France.

Suddenly any thing I'm doing wasting CO2 is making me a little bit more guilty

Denis.

__________________
Earth absorbs 1.8 t CO2/head/yr, while a French generates 6.2 t CO2/yr
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  • kg saved 06/08-08/09: 1816.9+382.9 (ecodriving / 1420mi not driven) = 2199.8
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    (2.66 kg/l diesel)
  • kg saved by 3kWc photo-voltaic solar panels : 187 kg/yr
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    (59.1 g/kWh)
Radioactive wastes saved by 3kWc photo-voltaic solar panels :
  • Long life (>100,000 years) : 2.85 g/yr (0.9 mg/kWh)
  • Short life (<300 years) : 31.7 g/yr (10.0 mg/kWh)
Based upon "official" French figures...
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