Technology for Evalution of Individual Carbon Footprint from Air Transportation

Transcription

1 34 Technology for Evalution of Individual Carbon Footprint from Air Transportation Riri Fitri Sari Department of Electrical Engineering Faculty of Engineering University of Indonesia Kampus Baru UI, Depok Indonesia Abstract This paper reviews Individual Carbon Footprint evaluation technology in order to reduce the Green House Gasses emission from Air Transportation. For the purpose of Green House Gasses mitigation, it is necessary for each individual passenger to have their personal air mileage record. By converting the air mileage, a passenger can calculate compensation required for the carbon emission, such as the cost for neutralizing the carbon emission. CO2 absorption enhancement program can be done by planting more trees, so called carbon offset program. Some factors such as the raise of buying power of individuals in many developing countries, democratization, globalization, the increase of the people s mobility around the world. More people can afford flying which in turns consume fossil fuels and produces tonnes of CO2 emissions. By imposing the recording of air mileage, calculation of CO2 emission, and socialization of carbon offset program, more individual will realize that they have made a lot of fuel consuming trip. Consequently it will sparkle some idea to reduce the mobility in order to reduce the carbon footprint. The awareness to conduct the calculation will hopefully limit the number of individual passenger trip. Consideration of the number of trees that must be planted to neutralize the system will be able to boost some action to balance the utilization of the earth resources. Sustainable environment for the future generations can only be made if the scenario of the worst case can be understood. Humanitarian technology to help us to keep a livable planet earth to the future generation can be exposed with the use of state of the art technology such as interesting 3D Internet games, virtual reality, and other web technology approaches. Keywords- Carbon footprint, carbon offset program, calculation of carbon footprint I. INTRODUCTION Sustainable development is an important area of concern of the 21 st century. This word is defined as the development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own needs[1]. There are 4 pillars in sustainability, i.e. economy, social, environment and culture[2, 4, 5].

2 Technology for Evalution of Individual Carbon Footprint from Air Transportation 35 Preservation or improvement of natural environment, to control pollution, is necessary to be realized. A lot of effort must be taken to reconstruct the reduction of habitat and the diversity losses. Technological advancement can help to improve the situation for the improvement of the civilization. Air transportation is one of the major sources of carbon footprint as it burns fossil fuels and produces carbon emission. We need to pioneer the air transportation concern of the future by exploring environmentally efficient technologies in order to create green aviation. Aviation is accountable for approximately 3% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. It is a major concern as CO2 emitted by aircrafts in the air remains in the atmosphere, and the warming effect is twice as much as the CO2 emission on the ground. Green air transportation has been the focus of a global agreement on aviation emissions. The goal is securing a 50% reduction in global aviation s net CO2 emissions by 2050 relative to This has been agreed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Airports Council International (ACI), etc[2, 3]. Presently, the aviation industry is going green. Many airlines are trying to measure their own carbon footprint and cut emissions. The development of information technology has expanded human ability to collect and process data and to conduct concerted effort to avoid the unexpected condition in the future. The use of computerized systems in various field and the existence of the push and pull technology in providing information have created a large source of information available in the Internet. For the purpose of the recording and collection of individual carbon footprint information, an interactive system can also be used widely all over the world to educate the users to use the resources in the world in an appropriate manner. II. WEB BASED SYSTEM FOR CARBON FOOTPRINT CALCULATION Flight calculator, carbon management system, carbon accounting management software, are some programs that can be found in the internet. This web enabled system has been designed with different approaches and methodologies to precisely calculate the carbon footprint. Subsequently all information of the activities can burn fuels and produces CO2 can be recorded and evaluated. The available systems in the Internet has been created a humanitarian technology to help recording and calculating carbon footprint and the carbon offset program that must be conducted. III. REVIEW ON EXISTING SYSTEMS A. Carbon Offset program A carbon offset is a reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide or green house gases made in order to compensate for or to offset an emission made elsewhere. This

3 36 program has appeal a lot of attention, as educated people become aware about the negative environmental effect of energy intensive lifestyle. Fig.1. Estimation the carbon emissions from air travel[7] B. Carbon Management Accounting Software There are some system such as CEMAsys[6] which is a cloud service for carbon management accounting. It consists of account setup, data collection and entry, creating reports and graphics to compare results over time, quality assurance with experienced analyst, reporting standards and initiatives such as GHG Protocol: It is expected that analysis and action plan can be created with what-if scenarios on the costs and benefits of various reduction targets and measures. C. Carbon Footprint calculator Carbon Footprint calculator such as in [8] can be introduced to a frequent flyer for them to calculate and realize their traces of carbon usage as can be seen in Figure 2 and 3. Fig.2. Carbon Footprint Calculator [8]

4 Technology for Evalution of Individual Carbon Footprint from Air Transportation 37 Fig.3. Result of Carbon Footprint from Aviation[8] IV. EVALUATION OF THE USE OF THE SYSTEM Currently the socialization of the carbon offset program to calculate the effect of the frequent flyer, and the individual concern to sustainability has not been really well developed. The use of the system can be encouraged by illustrating the advantage of the individual evaluation of the personal mileage record to decrease the tones of CO2 emission. The future system to improve the overall green aviation from the perspective of each individual can be done if more people and institution put some concern on the innovative ways to reduce the carbon emission. Carbon market and carbon trading are some issues that must be packaged for individual, local, national and regional integrated perspective. V. CONCLUSION From the literature review of the existing system to educate passenger of the carbon footprint emission it can be seen that some system has started to stimulate users to evaluated their air transportation activities. To neutralize the carbon emission, some program to plant trees and to create an ecosystem which can absorb the emission is necessary. There are some lessons learnt from realizing the effect of our activities to the environment. Some of this will lead to some effort to try to reduce the number of flights people take, and more trees to be planted. Green aviation fuels and all technology to reduce the fossil fuel burning will be some challenge for scientist of the century. Human beings should always think carefully for green activities and lifestyles.

5 38 References [1] Brundtland Report, 1987, United Nations. [2] Deloitte, Aviation and sustainability, Documents/RIO+20_booklet.pdf [3] ICAO, Global Aviation and Sustainable Future, [4] Sustainable Aviation UK, Sustainable Aviation CO2 Roadmap, sustainableaviation.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sa-co2-road-map-full-report pdf [5] Sustainable Development the World 3 Model, ppt. [6] Carbon footprint software - Carbon management - accounting, [7] Carbon, [8] Carbon Footprint calculator, com/calculator.aspx