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 :eek: 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 :eek:

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.

From Kyoto protocol, the CO2 emissions must be divided by 4 in 2020 compared to 1990. The houses were consuming 43% of total energy with 400 kWh/m²/year, grey energy included. In 2020 houses should consume 100 kWh/m²/year, included 50 for heating, hot water and AC.

(Edit) The accounted energy is the primary one, not the consumed one. For electricity, the French coefficient is 2.58 :mad: For other energies it's 1 :cool:

Here are the data for my house :

• Surface : 125 m²
• Total last year electricity bill : 11265 kWh, ie 90 kWh/m²/year.
  (Edit) The corresponding primary energy is 232 kWh/m²/year.
• evaluation for heating is 3 MWh/year and for hot water is 1.5 MWh/year, no AC, ie 36 kWh/m²/year.
  (Edit) The corresponding primary energy is 93 kWh/m²/year.
• Butane for cooking : one 13kg bottle/year. In a CO2 point of view this corresponds to 50.31 kg CO2 (3.87 kg CO2 / kg of butane) and to 555 kWh (1 French kWh = 0.09 kg CO2 for basic use that isn't constant) ie 5 kWh/m²/year.
• No idea about the grey energy used to build my house. From the figures found, it's less than 20% of the total energy consumed yearly by a house, ie (90+5)*0.20 = 19 kWh/m²/year.
• Now removing the green energy generated by the house : the solar panels should generate around 3125 kWh/year, ie 25 kWh/m²/year.

The final ratio for my house is 90+5+19-25 = 89 kWh/m²/year included 36 kWh/m²/year for heating. These are -11% and -28% of ratio required for the 2020 Kyoto goal :cool:
(Edit) The final ratio for primary energy is 232+5+19-25 = 231 kWh/m²/year included 93 kWh/m²/year for heating. These are +131% and +86% of ratio required for the 2020 Kyoto goal :o

Denis.

Alright, that was a bit hard to follow, but I think I got a good handle on it. What do you plan to do next to reduce your energy consumption?

I rephrased it...

Reply in this thread : http://ecorenovator.org/forum/conser...on-thread.html ;)

Denis.