"Carbon Footprint" Tracks The Source Of Energy Consumption (1)

Can you imagine how much carbon dioxide will be emitted from a Google search in everyday life? The latest research by Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist, pointed out that if using desktop computers in your home to search Google for two times, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by Weisner Gross is almost equivalent to boiling a pot of British tea.

Weisner Gross said that the Google search engine was used in many large data centers worldwide, which consumed a lot of electricity and had an absolute impact on the environment.

And he estimated that each Google search would produce 7 grams of carbon dioxide, while a pot of British tea would produce 15 grams of carbon dioxide.

The tracking result of this "carbon footprint" can not be denied that the Google will be pushed to the arbitration tribunal for carbon emissions.

When it comes to energy management, it is very important to understand the energy use of each link and calculate the carbon emissions of each link as one of the criteria for measuring energy consumption.

The measurement of carbon footprint is widely used as an estimation method of carbon consumption in various stages of product life cycle.

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The advocates of "green economy" uncover the carbon footprint of products by tracing the carbon footprint of products.

British environmental resource management has calculated the energy consumed by a 100% polyester pants of about 400 grams in its lifetime.

The trousers are made in Taiwan, China, and are made in Indonesia and shipped to the United Kingdom for sale.

Assuming that its service life is two years, it has undergone 92 washings, washing with 50 degree warm water washing machine, and drying machine after drying, averaging 2 minutes ironing.

In this way, the total consumption is about 200 degrees. If electricity is supplied by coal, it will emit about 47 kilograms of carbon dioxide, equivalent to 117 times the weight of trousers itself (the emission factor of Britain is 0.235 kilograms of carbon dioxide per degree).

This calculation reveals the carbon footprint of the whole life cycle of a pair of trousers, and the final result will also point to the textile manufacturers with high carbon emissions.

Some analysts pointed out that if the process from raw material to fabric is compared to the life cycle of a garment, the fetal carbon emissions will account for about 60%~70% of its lifetime carbon emissions.

Take the most elementary link in cotton harvesting. The machine stripping machine, roller, steel shuttle, brush and other devices pick up the cotton bolls from a cotton plant. A 700W stripper works for an hour, and the amount of cotton picking is equivalent to the workload of 20 workers per hour.

Technological progress has improved efficiency. If electricity can be supplied by coal, 0.788 kilograms of carbon emissions per kilowatt hour will be calculated. Only one hour of picking cotton will produce 0.5516 kilograms of carbon emissions.

Of course, reducing energy consumption is not just a matter for fabric enterprises. Understanding the carbon footprint of products is crucial to the upstream and downstream businesses of the textile industry, because the essence of "low-carbon economy" is energy pformation, and the most effective measure of energy management is carbon emissions.

The only way of energy management

It can not be ignored that in addition to improving the efficiency of energy use and reducing the cost of production, another major goal of strengthening energy management is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Effective energy control can reduce carbon emissions, and tracking carbon emissions at all stages of the product life cycle is a prerequisite for implementing energy conservation and emission reduction initiatives.

The greenhouse gas assessment guidelines for the PAS 2050 product and service life cycle, developed and promulgated by the British Standard Association (BSI), as an independent standard, can be used to calculate greenhouse gas emissions (i.e. "carbon footprint") of products and services throughout the life cycle (from raw material acquisition, production, distribution, use and disposal).

According to Ren Hui, director of operations at BSI risk and Sustainable Development Service Center, the standard can help enterprises reduce the opportunity of greenhouse gas emissions in the process of managing themselves, and help enterprises reduce carbon dioxide emissions from products or services, and ultimately develop new products with smaller "carbon footprint".